Resolve a researcher by ORCID iD. Returns name, affiliations (employments + educations with a current flag), a works count, and a works summary (title, type, year, DOI). Free, keyless ORCID Public API. The canonical author key in scholarly metadata.
AI agents call research.author to retrieve information from Mcp without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This is a straightforward data retrieval operation against public scholarly metadata. It queries the ORCID public API to fetch researcher information without side effects, reversible modifications, or code execution. No financial transaction is required (described as 'Free'). The blast radius of misuse is minimal—worst case, excessive queries cause brief lookup delays or rate-limiting.
From the tool's definition Tool resolves researcher data by ORCID iD and returns name, affiliations, works count, and works summary. Explicitly stated as 'Free, keyless ORCID Public API'—a query operation with no data modification, deletion, or execution.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Resolve a researcher by ORCID iD. Returns name, affiliations (employments + educations with a current flag), a works count, and a works summary (title, type, year, DOI). Free, keyless ORCID Public API. The canonical author key in scholarly metadata. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Mcp MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for research.author: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Mcp. Nothing to install.
research.author is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the research.author rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for research.author. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
research.author is provided by the MCP server (@2sio/mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Every MCP server has a record like this.
Type a name, get the same breakdown: verified identity, auth posture, risk grade, capabilities, recommended policy.
Teams ship this data inside their own products. See what a licence covers →