Datacite MCP Server

@cyanheads/datacite-mcp-server Search DataCite datasets and software, fetch DOI metadata, trace relations, format citations via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 6 Tools

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

Overview

DOI metadata from DataCite for datasets, software, samples, workflows, and other research outputs that repositories deposit worldwide. Search it, open a record in full, trace a DOI's relations (versions, parts, supplements, citations), find the repositories that publish in a field, and format citations. No API key required.

Tools

Capability reference

datacite_search_works tool

• text (literal words, with angle brackets removed; nonblank text that leaves no searchable clause fails as invalid_text) or query (OpenSearch query syntax), ANDed with filters: resource_types, creator (ORCID iD or name), affiliation (ROR ID or name), affiliation_country, funder (ROR ID, Crossref Funder ID, or name; include_child_funders with a ROR funder), subject, fields_of_science, repository_ids, provider_ids, licenses, language, place, published_from / published_to, and min_citations; list filters take up to 10 values, any of which match
• Positive integer limit (default 20), applied at most 1,000 with a requested/applied notice; ranked pages reach the first 10,000 matches under sort (relevance, newest, oldest, recently_updated, most_cited, most_viewed, most_downloaded; default relevance with text or query, else newest), while cursor: "*" walks the whole result set in registration order through nextCursor and takes neither page nor sort. A ranked ceiling stop is distinguished from the last page
• affiliation_country accepts current and formerly assigned ISO alpha-2 codes plus XK, in any case. UK maps to GB with a notice; unassigned codes fail as invalid_filter before searching
• Crossref Funder IDs resolve through one exact ROR FundRef mapping before searching funded-by; an unavailable, incomplete, or ambiguous mapping keeps literal identifier matching and discloses reduced coverage. The cached, paced lookup takes at most five seconds without retry. A cursor walk keeps its initial resolved or literal filter on every continuation without another ROR lookup, including across server restarts. include_child_funders still requires an explicitly supplied ROR
• License ids are trimmed and lowercased, preserving internal spaces (cc0 1.0 differs from cc0-1.0); reuse the licenses facet ids exactly. query also supports deposition timestamps, e.g. created:[2026-10-16 TO *], updated, and registered
• include_facets adds top counts for resource types, years, repositories, providers, affiliations, fields of science, and licenses (2–8 s slower); every response reports totalCount, effectiveQuery, sortApplied, and appliedFilters

datacite_get_work tool

• One doi, in any case: bare, with a doi: or info:doi/ prefix, as a doi.org URL, or %2F-encoded
• Titles, creators and contributors with ORCID iDs and ROR affiliations, dates, subjects, descriptions, funding, geolocations, rights, related identifiers and items, repository and provider, and counts (citations, references, versions, parts, views, downloads); long lists are capped and their full sizes reported in truncatedLists and relatedIdentifierCounts
• Page one capped list with a zero-based offset (default 0): creators, contributors, relatedIdentifiers, subjects, and fundingReferences return up to 100 entries, relatedItems 25, and geoLocations 50. Offsets index valid mapped entries in deposit order. listPage reports list, offset, total, and nextOffset while entries remain; other metadata keeps its normal caps. Default truncation notices give exact continuation inputs. An offset requires a list; past-end pages are empty
• Titles and search snippets are plain text, with recognized formatting tags removed and entities decoded once before snippet truncation, including all semicolon-terminated WHATWG named references such as α and β. Structured descriptions keep their deposited text; rendered descriptions preserve paragraph and line boundaries
• Geolocations preserve points, boxes, ordered polygon vertices, and optional polygon interior points. Incomplete polygons are omitted with a notice; valid sibling geometry remains
• A DOI DataCite holds no public record for returns found: false with missReason (other_agency, does_not_exist, not_public, unclassified), the registrationAgency when known, and guidance

datacite_trace_relations tool

• Any agency's doi: a DataCite dataset or software DOI, or a journal article's DOI to find the DataCite data and software it cites or that cite, supplement, or derive from it
• depth 1 (default) or 2 — the second hop expands at most 10 DataCite neighbours and runs only when the first hop leaves max_nodes room; positive integer max_nodes (default 50, root included), applied at most 100 with a notice, fills with own-metadata targets, then records pointing at the root, then Event Data endpoints, then the second hop; relation_types keeps only the listed relation types, read from the traced DOI's side (omitted: all); include_event_data (default true) adds Event Data citation links
• Edges keep relationType exactly as asserted and list their sources (metadata, reverse_metadata, event_data); coverage states how much of each source was read (up to 100 reverse records per hop, only the first 10 when those are large, and up to 100 events per call), and rootCounts carries DataCite's own counts for comparison. An absent edge is not evidence that no relationship exists
• Reverse lookups inspect both relatedIdentifiers and identified relatedItems, verify each assertion's target and type, and merge identical edges
• event_offset (0–9,999, absolute and zero-based) selects Event-Data-only tracing, including when set to 0: metadata edges and depth-2 expansion are skipped. Continue with coverage.eventData.nextEventOffset and the same DOI and filters. Each call reads one upstream page and stops before an eligible endpoint that cannot fit max_nodes; root-only calls explain how to raise the cap. Coverage distinguishes exhaustion, a blocked classification lookup, unavailable/skipped reads, and the upstream 10,000-result ceiling. Upstream ordering can change between calls; continuations are not snapshots

datacite_search_repositories tool

• query text over names and descriptions, plus field_of_science, repository_types, certificates, software, client_type, and provider_id; or repository_ids alone (up to 1,000 inputs) to look up the first 25 distinct normalized ids in input order. A notice names unqueried ids; missing-id notices cover queried ids only
• Positive integer limit (default 20), applied at most 1,000 with a requested/applied notice, with page; name-ordered rows carry the repositoryId that datacite_search_works takes in repository_ids, plus providerId, types, certificates, software, subjects, homepage, and re3data link
• Search responses echo the composed effectiveQuery (* without query clauses), including empty pages; ID lookups report appliedFilters.repository_ids without a query echo

datacite_get_citation tool

• format: text (default), csl_json, bibtex, ris, datacite_json, datacite_xml, schema_org, codemeta, or jats
• For text only: style takes a CSL style id (default apa; verified ids under datacite_list_reference topic citation_styles), and one DataCite would silently render as APA fails as unsupported_style; locale takes one of the 61 CSL locales DataCite renders (en-GB, de-DE, fr-FR, …) or a bare language code that expands to its primary dialect (de → de-DE), default en-US (list: topic citation_locales)
• text returns the citation as plain text in citation and the upstream markup in citationHtml; text payloads over 100,000 UTF-16 code units are cut without splitting a surrogate pair. Machine formats return complete payloads inline up to that cap; larger documents omit citation and return downloadUrl for the full document and totalCharacters, with truncated: true, shown: 0, and cap: 100000. A DOI DataCite doesn't hold returns found: false as in datacite_get_work; a format DataCite can't render for that DOI fails as format_unavailable
• JATS stays verbatim. A notice reports empty name elements or a year that disagrees with its ISO date, including when the document is returned by download URL; use csl_json, bibtex, ris, or datacite_json for another representation

datacite_list_reference tool

• topic: resource_types, relation_types, `identifie