Openalex MCP server

online · 100% uptime

by cyanheads·io.github.cyanheads/openalex-mcp-server·v0.11.0·14 stars

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Access the OpenAlex academic research catalog — 270M+ publications.

A93/100grade A

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A93/100

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Adoption

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14 stars2.1k downloads/wk

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How Openalex compares

Against every graded MCP server, from our own scans and uptime checks. Updated after each scan run.

Safety score: 93/100; higher than 96% of 48,255 servers
Uptime: 100%; of our recent checks; the typical remote server answers 100%
Response time: 465 ms; faster than 32% of 30,031 servers
GitHub stars: 14; more than 90% of 28,688 servers
Downloads a week: 2,058; more than 95% of 12,191 servers with a package

Release history: 8 versions in the registry since 2026-09-13, latest 2026-10-29, typically one every 3 days.

Install Openalex in Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code

claude mcp add --transport http openalex-mcp-server https://openalex.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Add to Cursor

What the publisher says

From the Openalex repository's README, as published. We do not edit it. Read it on GitHub

@cyanheads/openalex-mcp-server Access the OpenAlex academic research catalog - 270M+ publications through MCP. STDIO & Streamable HTTP. 5 Tools • 2 Prompts

Public Hosted Server: https://openalex.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

Scholarly catalog data from OpenAlex — 270M+ works, 90M+ authors, 100K+ sources, plus institutions, topics, keywords, publishers, and funders. Search, filter, and aggregate across all eight entity types, resolve ambiguous names to canonical IDs, and walk the citation graph one hop at a time. Runs as a stdio process, a local Streamable HTTP server, or the public hosted endpoint above.

Tools

Prompts

Capability reference

openalexsearchentities tool

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.

Nothing above is checked by us. What we check is on the safety report.

Openalex: common questions

Is Openalex MCP server safe?: Yes, by our scan: it is graded A (93/100). Read the Openalex safety report
How do I install Openalex?: It runs remotely at openalex.caseyjhand.com. Add it to Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or Claude Desktop with the snippets above, or call it through the mcp.market gateway without installing anything.
Does Openalex need an API key?: No secret keys are declared. It reads 17 settings from the environment.
Is Openalex maintained?: The last commit was 35 days ago (2026-09-30). The latest release is v0.11.0.
Is Openalex up?: 100% of our last 28 checks got an answer. We check remote servers about four times a day.
How does Openalex compare with other MCP servers?: safety score 93/100 (higher than 96% of 48,255 servers); uptime 100% (of our recent checks; the typical remote server answers 100%); response time 465 ms (faster than 32% of 30,031 servers). Full comparison.

Run it through the gateway

With the gateway added, ask your agent for it by name:

agent prompt

call io.github.cyanheads/openalex-mcp-server → <tool>

Free per call. Metered, capped by your key, logged for reliability.

Add the gateway (gw.mcp.market)

Rating: —
Safety grade: A · 93/100
Stars: 14
Downloads/wk: 2.1k
Price: Free
Licence: Apache-2.0
Transport: Remote · mixed
Uptime: 100% · 28/28 checks
Version: 0.11.0
Category: Everything else
Last release: 2026-09-30

Credentials it needs

OPENALEX_CLAMP_PER_PAGEClamp oversized count inputs (per_page, semantic-search per_page, sample, slice.limit) to their caps with a notice. Set false to reject them instead.
OPENALEX_FILTER_STRING_INPUTAccept unambiguous native filter strings on search_entities. Set false to require record objects.
OPENALEX_API_KEYOpenAlex account API key, sent as api_key= - optional (free from https://openalex.org/settings/api). Without it, anonymous rate limits apply.
OPENALEX_MAILTOOptional email sent as mailto= to identify yourself to OpenAlex (the polite pool). Separate from the API key.
OPENALEX_BASE_URLOpenAlex API base URL.
MCP_LOG_LEVELSets the minimum log level for output (e.g., 'debug', 'info', 'warn').
OPENALEX_CLAMP_PER_PAGEClamp oversized count inputs (per_page, semantic-search per_page, sample, slice.limit) to their caps with a notice. Set false to reject them instead.
OPENALEX_FILTER_STRING_INPUTAccept unambiguous native filter strings on search_entities. Set false to require record objects.
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPESelects the HTTP transport.
OPENALEX_API_KEYOpenAlex account API key, sent as api_key= - optional (free from https://openalex.org/settings/api). Without it, anonymous rate limits apply.
OPENALEX_MAILTOOptional email sent as mailto= to identify yourself to OpenAlex (the polite pool). Separate from the API key.
OPENALEX_BASE_URLOpenAlex API base URL.
MCP_HTTP_HOSTThe hostname for the HTTP server.
MCP_HTTP_PORTThe port to run the HTTP server on.
MCP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_PATHThe endpoint path for the MCP server.
MCP_AUTH_MODEAuthentication mode to use: 'none', 'jwt', or 'oauth'.
MCP_LOG_LEVELSets the minimum log level for output (e.g., 'debug', 'info', 'warn').

Endpoint

https://openalex.caseyjhand.com/mcp

streamable-http

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