OpenAlex

liveResearchScience

Search scholarly works, authors, institutions, and academic concepts via the OpenAlex API

6tools
0msauth
free tier50 calls/day

Tools

search_works

Search scholarly/academic research across ALL fields — medicine, biology, neuroscience, genetics, chemistry, physics, materials science, computer science, economics, and beyond. Find recent studies, p

No parameters required.

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search_authors

Find researchers by name or institution affiliation. Returns author name, ORCID, institution, publication count, and total citations.

No parameters required.

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search_institutions

Find academic institutions by name or location (e.g., country code 'US', 'GB'). Returns institution name, country, type, publication count, and research areas.

No parameters required.

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get_concept

Look up research fields or topics by name. Returns concept description, publication count, related concepts, and parent concepts in the academic hierarchy.

No parameters required.

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get_scholarly_work

Fetch a single scholarly work from OpenAlex by its OpenAlex ID (e.g. "W2741809807") or DOI (e.g. "10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2"). Returns the full record + reconstructed abstract and the works it CITES

No parameters required.

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get_journal_publishing_model

Is a journal subscription, hybrid or fully open access? Look up a journal by ISSN (print or electronic, e.g. "0025-1461" or "1864-1547") and get its publisher, article-processing charge, whether the D

No parameters required.

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Test with curl

The gateway speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP POST. You can test any pack directly from the terminal.

List available tools
bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openalex/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'
Call a tool
bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openalex/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_works","arguments":{}}}'

Use with the SDK

Install @pipeworx/sdk to call tools from any TypeScript/Node project.

TypeScript
import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const px = new Pipeworx();
const result = await px.call("search_works", {});
ask_pipeworx
// Or ask in plain English:
const answer = await px.ask("search scholarly works, authors, institutions, and academic concepts via the openalex api");