Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx skills add JOSETRA44/openalex-mcp --skill openalex-researchergit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JOSETRA44/openalex-mcpWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/josetra44/openalex-mcp/openalex-researcher)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/josetra44/openalex-mcp/openalex-researcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/josetra44/openalex-mcp/openalex-researcher/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/josetra44/openalex-mcp/openalex-researcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/josetra44/openalex-mcp/openalex-researcher.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00193 | $0.03587 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00077 | $0.01435 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00039 | $0.00717 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00019 | $0.00359 |
Grade A, and why
openalex-researcher scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 446 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
OpenAlex Researcher Skill
Use this skill whenever the user needs to:
- Find scholarly papers, articles, preprints, or books
- Look up an author's publication record and impact metrics
- Analyze what a university or research institute publishes
- Explore journals, conferences, or open-access repositories
- Generate year-by-year citation or publication trend charts
- Understand the research landscape of a topic or field
OpenAlex covers 250M+ works, 300M+ authors, and 100K+ institutions. All data is free (CC0).
Two ways to call OpenAlex — check which one you have
- MCP tools available (
openalex_search_worksetc. show up in your tool list) → use them directly. This is the primary path; everything below assumes this unless stated otherwise. - No MCP tools available (shell-only agent, CI, no MCP server registered) →
shell out to the
openalexCLI via Bash instead. It calls the identical underlying code, so results match exactly — only the calling convention changes. Readreferences/cli-usage.mdfor the full command reference, install check, and--jsonscripting pattern before using it.
When to Use Each Tool
| Situation | MCP tool | CLI equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| User asks to find papers on a topic | openalex_search_works |
openalex search-works |
| User has a DOI or paper ID | openalex_get_work |
openalex get-work |
| User asks about a researcher | openalex_search_authors → openalex_get_author |
openalex search-authors → openalex get-author |
| User wants institutional output | openalex_search_institutions → openalex_search_works |
openalex search-institutions → openalex search-works |
| User asks about a journal | openalex_search_sources → openalex_get_source |
openalex search-sources → openalex get-source |
| User wants publication trends over time | openalex_aggregate_works(group_by="publication_year") |
openalex aggregate-works publication_year |
| User wants topic/type/country breakdown | openalex_aggregate_works(group_by=...) |
openalex aggregate-works <group_by> |
| User needs filter syntax | Read openalex://filter-reference |
openalex filter-guide |
What ships with it
4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 1mo ago Changed · +29 lines · +145 tokens per session 6e113884fb8e
- 1mo ago First seen · 417 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A a534da9b81bb
openalex-researcher is a skill published in the GitHub repository JOSETRA44/openalex-mcp (0 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 193 tokens to every session and 3,587 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.
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