Inciteful MCP
OfficialServer Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| OPENALEX_EMAIL | No | OpenAlex mailto contact | |
| OPENALEX_API_KEY | No | OpenAlex API key | |
| INCITEFUL_BASE_URL | No | Inciteful server base URL | https://graph.incitefulmed.com |
| REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS | No | Per-request timeout, maximum 300000 | 45000 |
Instructions
Guidance the server publishes about itself, which clients place ahead of the tool catalog so the model reads it before choosing anything.
This server publishes no instructions, or was last inspected before Glama recorded them.
Capabilities
Features and capabilities supported by this server
Protocol revision2025-11-25
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| tools | {
"listChanged": true
} |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| search_papersA | Search OpenAlex for papers by topic or title. Returns metadata and next_cursor for pagination. Use selected IDs with get_paper or similar_papers. |
| get_paperA | Retrieve a paper from OpenAlex (full metadata, DOI/OpenAlex ID/PMID) or Inciteful (compact graph metadata and citation counts). |
| similar_papersA | Find related literature using Inciteful citation graph similarity, optionally enriched with OpenAlex metadata via exact DOI matches. OpenAlex IDs are resolved to DOI/PMID first. Graph coverage may be narrower than OpenAlex. |
| connect_papersA | Find citation paths between two papers using Inciteful. Returns paths, edge directions, and the papers on the returned paths. |
| discover_papersA | Rank papers in an Inciteful graph around one seed paper by similarity, PageRank influence, or publication year. Excludes the seed. Similarity is a graph metric, not a quality assessment. |
| literature_reviewA | Build and query a literature-review graph from 1–500 seed papers. Returns selected paper, author, institution, and journal rankings based on Inciteful dashboard queries. To add papers, call again with the returned seed_ids plus selected result paper_id values. Batches OpenAlex/Inciteful identifier resolution and deduplicates canonical seeds. Multi-seed similarity and review candidates use distance 2; seeds are excluded from rankings. Review-paper and upcoming-author labels are graph heuristics. No persistent review state is stored. |
| get_abstractA | Retrieve a readable abstract from OpenAlex, falling back to PubMed/PMC BioC. Returns source attribution and candidate full-text links. |
| get_full_text_linksA | Return potential full-text PDF and article URLs from OpenAlex, ordered with its best open-access copy first. Includes license/version/access metadata and archive URLs. Use your web tools to fetch publisher or repository links; availability is not guaranteed. |
| get_full_textA | Fetch readable article text from PMC BioC, or OpenAlex structured XML when an API key is configured (archive download charges may apply). Returns chunks with next_offset and content hash. If retrieval fails, returns candidate URLs for the agent to fetch with web/PDF tools. Does not scrape arbitrary publisher sites. |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
TDQS
Scored across 9 tools
Each tool targets a distinct research workflow step: search, retrieval, similarity, citation paths, discovery, review, abstracts, and full-text. Similar purposes exist between similar_papers and discover_papers, but their methodological differences are clearly described, avoiding significant confusion.
Tool names mostly follow a verb_noun pattern (search_papers, get_paper, connect_papers, get_abstract, get_full_text). A few names deviate slightly, such as similar_papers and literature_review, but the convention is consistent enough to be predictable and readable.
With 9 tools, the set is well-scoped for a scholarly research assistant covering search, discovery, analysis, and retrieval. Each tool has a clear role without unnecessary proliferation or redundancy.
The tools cover the full research lifecycle: searching, retrieving metadata, exploring citation relationships, ranking and discovering papers, building literature reviews, and obtaining abstracts and full text. No major gaps are evident for the stated academic research domain.