DOAJ MCP Server

DOAJ

Directory of Open Access Journals — a curated index of peer-reviewed, open access journals. Search across articles and journals by topic, author, or keyword. Public API, no authentication required.

Entity Model

• Articles — individual research papers. Each has title, authors, abstract, DOI, journal ISSN, publication date, and subject classifications. Search returns paginated results.
• Journals — open access journals indexed by DOAJ. Each has title, publisher, ISSN, subject areas, license type, and APC (article processing charge) info. Search to find journals by topic or publisher.

Workflows

• Literature search: search articles by topic keyword to find relevant papers, then review abstracts and DOIs.
• Journal discovery: search journals by subject area to find where to publish or which journals cover a field.
• Cross-reference: search articles first, then search journals by ISSN from the results to learn about the publishing venue.

Gotchas

• Rate limit: Roughly two calls per second sustained—faster bursts get throttled.
• pageSize parameter: controls results per page. Keep small (3-10) to avoid slow responses and rate limits.
• Query syntax: supports Lucene-style queries (e.g., title:climate AND author:Smith). Plain keywords also work.
• No auth: completely public API; no credentials required.