Orcid MCP Server

What orcid-mcp-server does

The orcid-mcp-server MCP server exposes ORCID registry data to an MCP client for researcher discovery and record retrieval. It covers researcher profiles, publications and other works, affiliations, funding, peer review activity, and research resources such as equipment access or compute allocations.

The server provides nine tools. Search accepts structured fields including given name, family name, affiliation, keyword, ROR ID, DOI, PMID, and grant number. A separate resolver ranks verified ORCID iD candidates when an author name is ambiguous. Once an ORCID iD is known, tools can retrieve the public profile, works, affiliations, funding, peer reviews, and research resources.

Two resources are also available: a profile URI and a works URI for a researcher. The profile resource supplies person-section data, while the works resource returns the first 25 works and the total count. Use resources for stable context injection and tools when filtering, paging, or processing results is required.

How it works

The server communicates with clients through MCP using either STDIO or Streamable HTTP. A public hosted endpoint is available at https://orcid.caseyjhand.com/mcp; the package can also be run locally through the published npm package.

Search fields are combined for precise lookups, while the raw query option supports Solr syntax. Searches require at least one nonblank criterion and reject malformed DOI, PMID, or ROR ID values before making a request. DOI and PMID searches identify researchers who linked the specified work to their ORCID record.

Results are designed for continuation. Search and works queries return paging information, and responses can stop early when output would exceed the server's 64,000-byte limit. Work retrieval accepts put-codes in batches of up to 1,000, returns the first 100 distinct works, and reports deferred codes for later requests.

Setup and configuration

For a local STDIO installation, an MCP client can start the package with npx -y @cyanheads/orcid-mcp-server. The repository provides installation links for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code, as well as a downloadable MCPB release for Claude Desktop.

The hosted Streamable HTTP endpoint can be used instead of running the package locally.

Tools and capabilities

• Search the ORCID registry with names, affiliations, keywords, ROR IDs, DOIs, PMIDs, or grant numbers.
• Resolve an ambiguous researcher name to ranked ORCID iD candidates.
• Retrieve public profile fields such as names, biography, keywords, URLs, identifiers, emails, and countries when visible.
• List publications, datasets, software, and preprints with pagination and external identifiers.
• Fetch detailed work records from ORCID put-codes.
• Inspect employment, education, memberships, grants, contracts, awards, peer reviews, and research resources.

The orcid-mcp-server MCP server returns only publicly visible profile fields. An empty section can indicate that the researcher has restricted its visibility rather than that no data exists. Works are summarized in list responses; detailed work lookups are needed for abstracts and contributor information. Work identifiers are formatted for chaining to Crossref, PubMed, or arXiv, but those services are not themselves exposed as tools here.

Limitations and notes

The registry data depends on what researchers and member organizations have deposited and made public. Search results are capped by documented request and response limits, including a 1,000-item effective cap for several list operations and the 64,000-byte response threshold.

This project is listed in the 🔬 Research category and is licensed under Apache-2.0.