`search_authors`

Pack: openalex · Endpoint: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openalex/mcp

No MCP client? Call it directly: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_authors for the schema, then POST the same URL with its arguments for the data.

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

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`query`	string	yes	Author name to search for (e.g., “Yoshua Bengio”)
`_apiKey`	string	no	OpenAlex API key. Optional — Pipeworx supplies one; pass your own to bill your account instead.
`limit`	number	no	Number of results to return (1-25, default 10)

Example call

Arguments

{
  "query": "Yoshua Bengio"
}

curl

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openalex/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_authors","arguments":{"query":"Yoshua Bengio"}}}'

TypeScript (@pipeworx/sdk)

import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const pipeworx = new Pipeworx();

const result = await pipeworx.call('search_authors', {
  "query": "Yoshua Bengio"
});

More examples

{
  "query": "Fei-Fei Li",
  "limit": 15
}

Response shape

Always returns: total, results

Field	Type	Description
`total`	number	Total number of authors matching the query
`results`	array

Full JSON Schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "total": {
      "type": "number",
      "description": "Total number of authors matching the query"
    },
    "results": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "id": {
            "type": "string",
            "description": "OpenAlex author ID"
          },
          "display_name": {
            "type": "string",
            "description": "Author's display name"
          },
          "orcid": {
            "type": [
              "string",
              "null"
            ],
            "description": "ORCID identifier"
          },
          "works_count": {
            "type": "number",
            "description": "Number of published works"
          },
          "cited_by_count": {
            "type": "number",
            "description": "Total citation count"
          },
          "last_known_institution": {
            "type": [
              "string",
              "null"
            ],
            "description": "Last known institutional affiliation"
          },
          "institution_country": {
            "type": [
              "string",
              "null"
            ],
            "description": "Country code of institution"
          },
          "top_concepts": {
            "type": "array",
            "items": {
              "type": "string"
            },
            "description": "Top research concepts (up to 5)"
          }
        },
        "required": [
          "id",
          "display_name",
          "orcid",
          "works_count",
          "cited_by_count",
          "last_known_institution",
          "institution_country",
          "top_concepts"
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "total",
    "results"
  ]
}

Connect

Add this to your MCP client config, or use one-click install buttons:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openalex": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openalex/mcp"
    }
  }
}

See Getting Started for client-specific install steps.

search_authors