@pipeworx/crossref
Connect: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/crossref/mcp · Install: one-click buttons
Tools: 3
Crossref is the largest DOI (Digital Object Identifier) registration agency. Every DOI you’ve seen in an academic citation goes through them. Their API exposes structured metadata for ~150M+ scholarly works: titles, authors, ORCIDs, abstracts where available, references, citation graphs. Free, no auth required.
Why this matters for AI agents
Where Semantic Scholar is search-focused, Crossref is the authoritative source for DOI metadata. If you have a DOI and need its canonical metadata, Crossref is the answer. Citation networks are also more complete here than in many discipline-specific databases.
Common flows:
- DOI → metadata.
crossref_get_work({doi: "10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762"})→ title, authors, journal, year, citations. - Author DOIs. Find a researcher’s published works by ORCID or name.
- Citation graph. A paper’s references and which papers cite it (where reported).
For free-text academic search, prefer Semantic Scholar — Crossref’s search is more limited.
Citable URI: pipeworx://crossref/work/{doi}.
Auth
Public, free. Crossref has a “polite pool” giving priority to clients that identify themselves via User-Agent. Pipeworx forwards pipeworx-mcp/1.0 (https://pipeworx.io) so we get polite-pool treatment by default.
What’s in a Crossref record
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | Authoritative |
| Authors with ORCID | When the publisher recorded ORCIDs |
| Journal / publisher / year | Stable identifiers |
| References (the cited works) | Coverage varies by publisher |
| References by (citers) | Available via separate “is-referenced-by-count” |
| Open-access link | When publisher provides it |
| Funder data | NSF, NIH, etc. when reported |
Common pitfalls
- Reference-list completeness. Some publishers send their full reference list to Crossref; others don’t. A paper with 0 references in Crossref may have 50 in print. For exhaustive citation graphs, cross-reference with Semantic Scholar.
- Errata and retractions. Crossref tracks “scholix” links between original and retraction notices. Always check the
relationfield foris-retracted-bybefore citing. - Author ORCID coverage. ORCID adoption has grown but isn’t universal. Older papers and small-publisher works often lack ORCIDs. Don’t rely on ORCID-based deduplication for full coverage.
- DOI normalization. Different sources format DOIs slightly differently:
10.1234/xyz,https://doi.org/10.1234/xyz,doi:10.1234/xyz. Crossref accepts the bare form. Strip prefixes before passing to the API. - Books and chapters. Crossref covers books and chapters as well as articles. The
typefield tells you which (journal-article,book-chapter,proceedings-article, etc.). For systematic literature reviews, type filtering matters. - Pre-prints. Some pre-print servers register DOIs through Crossref (arXiv, bioRxiv). The same content may have multiple DOIs (pre-print + accepted version). Track via
relationfield.
Tools
- search_works — Search for academic papers, books, and datasets by keyword. Returns titles, authors, journals, DOIs, and citation counts.
- get_work — Get full metadata for a publication by DOI (e.g., “10.1038/nature12373”). Returns title, authors, abstract, journal, publisher, citations, and subjects.
- get_journal — Get the 5 most recent works from a journal by ISSN (e.g., “2041-1723”). Returns titles, authors, DOIs, and publication dates.
Tools
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get_journal— Get the 5 most recent works from a journal by ISSN (e.g., 2041-1723 ). Returns titles, authors, DOIs, and publication dates. -
get_work— Get full metadata for a publication by DOI (e.g., 10.1038/nature12373 ). Returns title, authors, abstract, journal, publisher, citations, and subjects. -
search_works— Search for academic papers, books, and datasets by keyword. Returns titles, authors, journals, DOIs, and citation counts.