Agent skill · research science · mvanhorn
pp-openalex
Search OpenAlex's catalog of 250M+ scholarly works, authors, sources, institutions, topics, keywords, publishers, and funders. Trigger phrases: `find scholarly papers on`, `look up research by <author>`, `citations for <work>`, `use openalex`.
Why this skill is useful
Provides specific commands for querying scholarly works and authors that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires openalex-pp-cli installed locally. About 8k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-06. 1,890 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Openalex — Printing Press CLI Prerequisites: Install the CLI This skill drives the openalex-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first: 1. Install via the Printing Press installer. It defaults binaries to $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows: 2. Verify: openalex-pp-cli --version 3. Ensure the reported install directory is on $PATH for the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill. If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.6 or newer): If --version reports "command not found" after install, the runtime cannot see the binary directory on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds. When Not to Use This CLI Do not activate this CLI for requests that require creating, updating, deleting, publishing, commenting, upvoting, inviting, ordering, sending messages, booking, purchasing, or changing remote state. This printed CLI exposes read-only commands for inspection, export, sync, and analysis. Unique Capabilities These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API. Research graph retrieval works list — Search scholarly works with compact JSON, field selection, filters, sorting, and live API fallback. authors list — Search authors and retrieve canonical OpenAlex author records for citation and collaborator research. institutions list — Search institutions with country/type metadata for affiliation and ecosystem analysis. sources list — Search journals, repositories, and venues with compact agent-oriented output. topics list — Explore OpenAlex topics for research-area discovery and downstream filtering. Command Reference authors — People who create scholarly works openalex-pp-cli authors get — Retrieve a single author by OpenAlex ID or ORCID. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills mvanhorn/pp-openalex--a25123