Project
OpenAlex MCP Server
An MCP server that lets campus AI agents query the OpenAlex scholarly database live, instead of guessing from documents somebody uploaded last semester.
The problem
Campus AI agents usually answer from documents you upload into them, and research data goes stale the moment you snapshot it. “What has this faculty member published recently?” is a question with a moving answer. The data already lives in OpenAlex, a free, open catalog of scholarly publications. The agents just needed a way to ask.
What I built
An MCP server that turns OpenAlex queries into tools an agent can call: search publications, look up authors, explore an institution’s research output. Any MCP-capable agent platform can attach it and answer research questions with live data and real citations, instead of confidently summarizing a PDF from two years ago.
It runs as an Azure Container App with scale-to-zero, which means it costs nothing while idle and wakes up when called. For a university watching every AI dollar, “free while nobody’s using it” is the correct default for this kind of infrastructure.
Why you might care
Honestly, this project earned its keep as a demo. MCP is abstract until you watch an agent pull a live publication list mid-conversation; then it clicks for everyone in the room. A small, cheap, working example beat every slide deck I could have made, and it became the template (architecture, hosting model, and pitch) for the MCP servers that came after it, including the ones I’ve helped other campus teams build.
If you’re trying to sell an organization on agent-to-system integration, my advice is the same: skip the strategy document, ship the smallest possible live example, and let it do the talking.