Openalex MCP Server

Access the OpenAlex academic research catalog - 270M+ publications through MCP. STDIO & Streamable HTTP. That is what the openalex mcp server brings to an AI assistant: the same capability, reachable through the Model Context Protocol rather than a separate app or dashboard.

The short version

• Declarative tool definitions — single file per tool, framework handles registration and validation
• Unified error handling across all tools
• Pluggable auth (none, jwt, oauth)
• Swappable storage backends via the framework (not currently used by this server)
• Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
• Runs locally (stdio/HTTP) or in Docker from the same codebase

The tools it exposes

The server publishes 7 tools. What each one is for:

• 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 an identifier (DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, ISSN, OpenAlex ID) to an OpenAlex ID
• openalex_get_citation_graph — Walk the citation graph one hop from a seed work: cites, cited_by, or related_to
• openalex_describe_fields — List valid filter, group_by, and select field names for an entity type — call before building a query to avoid invalid-field errors
• Prerequisites — The Prerequisites tool exposed by this server
• Installation — 1. Clone the repository: sh git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/openalex-mcp-server.git

What it needs from you

Configuration is passed through the environment: OPENALEX_API_KEY, OPENALEX_BASE_URL. Treat anything key-shaped as a real credential — scope it to the minimum the server needs, and rotate it if it ever lands in a shared config.

• Bun v1.3.0 or higher (for development)

Getting it running

Because this one is hosted, setup is mostly authentication — you point your client at the endpoint and approve access. Nothing runs on your machine, so there is no runtime to keep patched.

How it compares

This sits in the developer tooling group, where several servers overlap in what they claim to do but differ sharply once you actually set them up. Openalex's toolset — openalex_search_entities, openalex_analyze_trends, openalex_resolve_name and 4 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by cyanheads; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.

We check each listing at SyncDev against the project's documentation before it goes live — if something here drifts out of date, it is a bug worth reporting.

Things to watch

• Your data travels to the provider's service, so the usual questions apply about what you send and what they retain.
• Missing credentials fail quietly in some clients — if no tools show up, check the environment block first.
• Keep per-call confirmation enabled while you learn its behaviour; it is the cheapest safeguard you have.