openalex-mcp-server

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Tools

Four tools for querying the OpenAlex academic research catalog:

Tool Name	Description
openalex_search_entities	Search, filter, sort, or retrieve by ID across all 8 entity types.
openalex_analyze_trends	Group-by aggregation for trend and distribution analysis.
openalex_resolve_name	Resolve a name or partial name to an OpenAlex ID via autocomplete.
openalex_get_citation_graph	Walk the citation graph one hop from a seed work: cites, cited_by, or related_to.

openalex_search_entities

Primary discovery and lookup tool. Covers all OpenAlex entity types (works, authors, sources, institutions, topics, keywords, publishers, funders).

• Retrieve a single entity by ID (OpenAlex ID, DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, ISSN)
• Keyword search with boolean operators, quoted phrases, wildcards, and fuzzy matching
• Exact and AI semantic search modes
• Rich filter syntax: AND across fields, OR within fields (us|gb), NOT (!us), ranges (2020-2024), comparisons (>100)
• Sensible default field selection per entity type — prevents oversized responses; pass select to override
• Invalid select field names produce an error listing the valid fields for that entity type
• Formatted MCP output is a generic markdown renderer — every returned field is surfaced without per-entity-type hard-coding
• Cursor pagination, sorting, up to 100 results per page

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openalex_analyze_trends

Aggregate entities into groups and count them for trend, distribution, and comparative analysis.

• Group by any supported field (publication year, OA status, institution, country, topic, etc.)
• Combine with filters to scope the population before aggregation
• Up to 200 groups per page with cursor pagination
• Supports include_unknown to show entities with no value for the grouped field

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openalex_resolve_name

Name-to-ID resolution via autocomplete. Always use this before filtering by entity — names are ambiguous, IDs are not.

• Returns up to 10 matches with disambiguation hints
• Accepts partial names and DOIs for direct lookup
• Optional entity type filter and field-level filters
• ~200ms response time

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openalex_get_citation_graph

One-hop citation graph traversal from a seed work. Wraps the OpenAlex cites/cited_by/related_to filters behind an explicit direction argument so callers do not have to know the filter names.