Orcid MCP Server

@cyanheads/orcid-mcp-server Search and retrieve researcher profiles, works, affiliations, funding, and peer review records from the ORCID registry via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 9 Tools • 2 Resources

Public Hosted Server: https://orcid.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

Researcher identity data from the ORCID registry. Search and disambiguate authors, build a researcher dossier from profile, works, affiliations, funding, and peer review records, and chain external identifiers to Crossref, PubMed, or arXiv.

Tools

Resources

All resource data is also reachable via tools. Use resources when injecting stable researcher context into a prompt; use tools when filtering or processing results is needed.

The server also publishes an agent skill, orcid-guide (skill://orcid-guide/SKILL.md, source in skills/orcid-guide/): identity-confirmation gates, identifier chains between the tools, and raw Solr field syntax.

Capability reference

orcid_search_researchers tool

• Structured params — given_name, family_name, affiliation, keyword, ror_id, doi, pmid, grant_number — AND together automatically; query adds raw Solr syntax — sent as written when it is the only field, otherwise ANDed as one parenthesized group so a top-level OR keeps its alternatives (an exclusion-only query such as -keyword:x is ANDed ungrouped, since ORCID matches nothing for a group of only exclusions)
• At least one param must be non-blank — an empty or whitespace-only search is rejected rather than run against the whole registry
• given_name phrase-matches, except that a value of only initials (J., J. A.) matches given names starting with each letter
• doi and pmid map to doi-self / pmid-self field queries — finds researchers who linked that specific work to their ORCID record. URL and label forms (https://doi.org/…, doi:…, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…/, PMID:…) are accepted and reduced to the bare identifier, preserving its case. Nonblank values must contain a complete DOI (10. followed by digits, /, and a non-whitespace suffix) or numeric PMID; malformed and prefix-only values fail before a request. Omitted or genuinely blank fields remain unset
• ror_id takes a ROR ID bare (00f54p054) or as a ror.org URL (https://ror.org/…, ror.org/…, a www. host, a trailing slash), in either letter case, and is reduced to the https://ror.org/ form ORCID indexes; a value that is not a ROR ID, or whose check digits do not match, is rejected before any search runs
• grant_number phrase-matches the grant numbers on researchers' funding items, case-insensitively, over the parts between separators such as hyphens and slashes — 5F31MH010500 also matches 5F31MH010500-03, but a number cut mid-part matches nothing — pair with orcid_get_funding to inspect each match
• rows: results per page, default 20; a larger value (up to 10,000) is clamped to 1,000, the most ORCID serves per request, and a notice names both sizes on both surfaces. start: 0–10,000 offset pagination (the ORCID Public API's ceiling for unauthenticated requests)
• A page returns rows results, fewer only at the end of the matches; nextStart is start plus the number returned while matches remain
• Returns expanded-search results with inline name and institution data — no follow-up profile fetch needed for basic discovery
• Use for precise field-anchored lookups; use orcid_resolve_researcher for ambiguous names needing ranked disambiguation

orcid_get_profile tool

• Accepts a bare ORCID iD (0000-0001-2345-6789) or an orcid.org URI (https://orcid.org/…, orcid.org/…, a www. host, a trailing slash); a lowercase x check digit is canonicalized to X. Every tool that takes orcid_id accepts the same forms; the orcid://researcher/{orcid_id}/… resources take the bare iD
• A deprecated iD — one ORCID merged into another account — resolves to the primary record on every record tool and both resources, and orcidId/orcidUri report the primary iD; on the tools, selfAsserted is judged against it and a notice names both iDs
• Returns name, other names (former names, transliterations, initialed forms), biography, keywords, researcher URLs, external identifiers (Scopus Author ID, ResearcherID, Loop, etc.), emails, and country codes — all in one response
• Only publicly visible fields are returned; researchers control per-field visibility. A notice names every section with no public data (e.g. "no public email addresses or countries"), since an empty section can be private rather than empty
• Entry point for building a researcher dossier before fetching works or affiliations

orcid_get_works tool

• work_types keeps works of the listed types (ORCID's 58-value vocabulary, e.g. journal-article, preprint, data-set; any listed type matches, an empty list filters nothing); year_from and year_to keep works published in that inclusive range, read from the first four digits of publicationDate. Under a year bound, undated works drop out and a notice counts them. The filters run over the whole record before paging, at no extra upstream cost: matchedCount counts the matches, workCount the whole record, and appliedFilters echoes what was applied
• Returns 25 matching works by default; limit is clamped to 1,000 (accepted up to 10,000) with a notice naming both sizes. Page with offset and the returned nextOffset; a page holds limit works, fewer only at the end, and truncated says more remain. An offset past the matches returns a notice saying so; no match returns a notice naming the filters and workCount
• Set include_external_ids to false to drop DOI/PMID/arXiv/ISBN identifier lists for a lighter payload
• One record per ORCID work group; its identifiers are the group's — the preferred version's own, then any that another source holds, such as a PMID beside a Crossref DOI
• External identifiers are pre-formatted for chaining to Crossref, PubMed, or arXiv
• Summaries only — pass a work's putCode to orcid_get_work_detail for abstracts and contributor lists
• Each work lists its sources — the researcher, or member organizations such as Crossref or a university system — with selfAsserted marking what the researcher asserted; an empty list does not mean no publications

orcid_get_work_detail tool

• put_codes: 1–1,000 raw codes per call (from orcid_get_works), deduplicated in first-occurrence order before fetching the first 100 distinct codes in one request; every record ORCID returns for them comes back, and a notice names the input cap when applied
• Returns abstract, contributors with CRediT roles, the record's external IDs, citation metadata (BibTeX or other deposited formats), journal title, and URL
• A record listing more than 100 contributors keeps the first 100 plus the researcher's own entries, matched by ORCID iD, with contributorCount and contributorsTruncated marking the cut; a citation over 8,192 bytes is left out and flagged citationOmitted, so a large-collaboration paper costs about what its other fields do. Even so, 100 large-collaboration records run past 1 MB: size batches to what the step needs
• Each put-code is one source's version of the work, so its identifiers can be fewer than orcid_get_works lists for the work group; sources names that source
• Per-put-code failures (not found or inaccessible) arrive as errors entries — the rest of the batch still resolves
• deferredPutCodes lists, in request order, the distinct codes beyond the input cap and any ORCID's answer left out; pass it as put_codes in another call. Notices distinguish the two causes
• An upstream rate limit surfaces as a RateLimited error carrying ORCID's retryAfter when it sent one

orcid_get_affiliations tool

• types filters which sections to return: employment, education, invited-positions, distinctions, memberships, qualifications, services, or all — default is employment + education; an explicit empty list is rejected
• One upstream call regardless of how many types are requested
• Returns organization name, disambiguated ID (ROR/GRID/Ringgold), department, role, and date range per record
• Each record's sources names who added it — the researcher, or a member organization such as a univ