OpenAlex MCP — Author & Works

Use this server to disambiguate authors, resolve affiliations, and retrieve peer‑reviewed works from OpenAlex.

Codex CLI Notes

• Configured for stdio via $HOME/mcp/mcp-zotero-matlab-tools/bin/alex-mcp-stdio.sh (see dotfiles Codex config). Required env: OPENALEX_MAILTO="you@example.com"; optional OPENALEX_USER_AGENT.
• Call tools by exact name with JSON args (examples below).

Tools and When to Call

• search_authors(name, institution?, topic?, country_code?, limit?)
  • Use to find candidate authors; filter by institution/topic/country.
• autocomplete_authors(name, context?, limit?)
  • Use for quick candidates by name with lightweight output.
• retrieve_author_works(author_id, limit?, order_by?, publication_year?, type?, journal_only?, min_citations?, peer_reviewed_only?)
  • Use to get an author’s peer‑reviewed journal articles (default). Set order_by="citations" for impact.
• search_works(query, search_type?, author?, institution?, publication_year?, type?, limit?, peer_reviewed_only?)
  • Use for free‑text work search across titles/abstracts.
• search_pubmed(query, search_type?, max_results?) and pubmed_author_sample(author_name, sample_size?)
  • Convenience PubMed helpers bundled here for cross‑checks.
• search_orcid_authors(name, affiliation?, max_results?), get_orcid_publications(orcid_id, max_works?)
  • Use ORCID to validate identity and fetch works.

Examples (codex-cli)

• Disambiguate then fetch: call search_authors {"name":"Ivan Matic","institution":"Francis Crick"} → pick candidate.id → retrieve_author_works {"author_id":"https://openalex.org/A...","limit":20,"order_by":"citations"}
• Year filter: retrieve_author_works {"author_id":"...","publication_year":2023}

Tips

• Prefer peer_reviewed_only=true and journal_only=true for clean corpora.
• Include affiliations to separate common names.

Security & Limits

• Do not store secrets in prompts. Required: OPENALEX_MAILTO only.
• Respect OpenAlex rate limits; set OPENALEX_USER_AGENT when available.
• Avoid sending PII; author queries should be public academic info only.