cites

MCP tool from Openalex MCP Server by cyanheads

works that cite the seed (incoming citations)

How to use it

cites is exposed by the Openalex MCP Server MCP server. Add the server to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf and others), and the cites tool becomes available to the model automatically. See the full listing for setup details and every tool this server provides.

Install Openalex MCP Server

$docker run -e OPENALEX_API_KEY=your-key -p 3010:3010 openalex-mcp-server

FULL OPENALEX MCP SERVER LISTING

Other tools in Openalex MCP Server (9)

cited_by

works the seed cites (its reference list)

display_name

is nullable — OpenAlex holds no title for paratext and other untitled records, which pass through instead of failing the whole page

group_by

returns the subset of the filter set OpenAlex can aggregate — raw date fields, .search operators, and from/to range modifiers are excluded

openalex_analyze_trends

Group-by aggregation for trend and distribution analysis.

openalex_describe_fields

List valid filter, groupby, and select field names for an entity type — call before building a query to avoid invalid-field errors.

openalex_get_citation_graph

Walk the citation graph one hop from a seed work: cites, citedby, or relatedto.

openalex_resolve_name

Resolve a name or an identifier (DOI, ORCID, ROR, PMID, PMCID, ISSN, OpenAlex ID) to an OpenAlex ID.

openalex_search_entities

Search, filter, sort, or retrieve by ID across all 8 entity types.

related_to

OpenAlex algorithmic "related works" (~8-30 typical, may be empty for less-cited seeds)