About Data Aggregator
Data Aggregator is an MCP server for researchers and agents that need to locate public research datasets across multiple archives and literature sources. It combines results into a deduplicated list and can resolve records with links, license checks, and research metadata.
Key features
- 01Search 21 public data sources at once
- 02Deduplicate results across sources
- 03Resolve records and linked datasets
- 04Check license metadata for a stated use
- 05Export Croissant or RO-Crate
Use cases
- 01Find datasets for a species or topic
- 02Trace datasets associated with a paper
- 03Check recorded license permissions for model training
- 04Review links shared across research records
MCP support
Exposes search, resolution, relationship, and related research-data operations to MCP clients. An optional operate extra adds SQL and previews over remote files.
Configuration
Local server config is the same for every client. Copy it into your client’s MCP config file.
uvx data-aggregator-mcpNCBI_API_KEYSecretOptional NCBI E-utilities API key; raises the rate limit 3->10 req/s for omics, literature, and taxonomy lookups.LLM_API_BASEBase URL of an OpenAI-compatible /chat/completions endpoint; enables search(understand=true) and search(multi_query=true).LLM_API_KEYSecretBearer token for the LLM endpoint (LLM_API_BASE); omit for keyless local servers.LLM_MODELModel name passed to the LLM endpoint (default: gpt-4o-mini); set to whatever your endpoint serves.EMBEDDING_API_BASEBase URL of an OpenAI-compatible /embeddings endpoint; enables search(rank=semantic) re-ranking.EMBEDDING_API_KEYSecretBearer token for the embeddings endpoint (EMBEDDING_API_BASE); omit for keyless local servers.EMBEDDING_MODELModel name passed to the embeddings endpoint (default: text-embedding-3-small).DATA_GOV_API_KEYSecretOptional api.data.gov key for the data.gov source; without it requests fall back to the shared public DEMO_KEY, which is aggressively rate-limited.UNPAYWALL_EMAILEmail address sent to the Unpaywall API; required to enable the Unpaywall PDF fallback leg of literature full-text retrieval.NCBI_EMAILContact address sent to NCBI's ID converter; falls back to UNPAYWALL_EMAIL when unset.DATAVERSE_BASE_URLResolve Dataverse DOIs against a different installation (default: https://dataverse.harvard.edu).CACHE_TTL_SECONDSResolve-cache lifetime in seconds (default: 3600); an unparseable value falls back to the default.Local servers need a runtime on your machine (e.g. Node.js 18+). Config file locations differ by client; see your client’s docs.
Tools
Local servers expose tools only once running on your machine, and the maintainer has not provided a tool list.
Details
From the project READMEdata-aggregator-mcp
data-aggregator-mcp is an MCP server that lets AI agents search 21 public research-data sources at once and get back one deduplicated list.
Install
Claude Code:
claude mcp add data-aggregator -- uvx data-aggregator-mcp
One-click install for VS Code or Cursor:
Any other MCP client: run uvx data-aggregator-mcp as a stdio server.
Claude Desktop, pip, and the operate extra
Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json) and most other clients:
{
"mcpServers": {
"data-aggregator": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["data-aggregator-mcp"],
"env": { "NCBI_API_KEY": "your-optional-key" }
}
}
}
With pip:
pip install data-aggregator-mcp
data-aggregator-mcp # or: python -m data_aggregator_mcp
operate (SQL and previews over remote files) needs an optional extra:
pip install "data-aggregator-mcp[operate]".
What you can ask
"Find transcriptomes for Orobanche aegyptiaca." The species was renamed; NCBI Taxonomy maps it to Phelipanche aegyptiaca, and the sources that accept synonyms match both names (the demo above).
"What data came out of this paper?"
resolve("pubmed:40098680")
links geo:GSE284240, bioproject:PRJNA1198054, and 18 sra: experiments
files PMC11910882.xml (open-access full text)
"Can I train a model on this dataset?"
resolve("hf:scikit-learn/iris", use="ml-training")
license_compat ALLOW: "CC0-1.0 grants the permission(s) required for
ml-training: commercial-use, modifications"
The verdict is read from the record's license metadata; it is advice, not a legal
opinion. resolve also renders citations in any CSL style, checks Crossref for
retractions, scores FAIRness, and exports Croissant or RO-Crate. relate reports
how a set of records connect (a shared accession, DOI or explicit link).
How a search runs
A source that fails is named in the result's errors, never dropped silently.
What each source can fetch, and which checksum it is verified against: docs/sources.md.
What the benchmark shows
An agent using this server was compared with the same agent using web search, on held-out dataset-finding tasks scored by recall against independently built answer keys, 3 runs per task. Mean recall, server against web search: Claude Haiku 5.5 0.47 against 0.32 (higher on 8 of 10 tasks), Sonnet 5.5 0.54 against 0.52 (5 of 10), Opus 5.5 0.72 against 0.58 (6 of 10). With Haiku the server met round 5's pre-registered "better" rule (higher on at least 8 of 10 tasks, interval above 0) but not the stricter bar for a win across model tiers (9 of 10, Holm-adjusted sign test, p = 0.22); Sonnet and Opus met neither. With Opus it returned fewer wrong entries and answered in about a third of the time; with Sonnet it was faster on 9 of 10 tasks; with Haiku it cost less on 9 of 10.
The two latest Opus 5.5 rounds (2026-10-19, rules written before the runs):
| Tools given to the agent | Round 4 (5 tasks) | Round 5 (10 tasks) |
|---|---|---|
| this server | 0.66 | 0.72 |
| web search | 0.66 | 0.58 |
| ToolUniverse | 0.59 | 0.63 |
| no tools (memory only) | 0.02 | 0.09 |
In round 5 this server was higher on 6 of 10 tasks, where the pre-set rule needed 8. Web search hit the 15-minute limit in 11 of 30 runs, and a run that times out scores 0. In runs that finished, web search found more (0.90). The server answered in 203 s against 599 s (median), with fewer tool calls and fewer wrong entries (precision 0.95 against 0.62). It cost more per run than web search ($2.08 against $1.51, API-equivalent).
We chose the tasks and ran the benchmark ourselves; an outside re-run is welcome. Method and controls: benchmarks/h2h; the Haiku and Sonnet runs: 2026-10-20 re-run.
Compared with other servers
| Server | Searches | One search | Checksum | Remote SQL | License check |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| data-aggregator-mcp | 21 sources: data archives, omics, papers | yes, DOI dedup | where published | yes | yes |
| Mobus | 20 general and ML data platforms | yes | — | row preview | yes |
| paper-search-mcp | papers: arXiv, PubMed, OpenAlex, Crossref and more | yes, deduplicated | — | — | — |
| ToolUniverse | 1000+ tools: models, datasets, APIs, packages | papers | — | — | — |
| BioMCP | genes, variants, trials, drugs, proteins, papers | yes (search all) | — | — | — |
— means the project's README doesn't describe it (READMEs read 2026-10-04). Where they are ahead: BioMCP reaches clinical trials, ChEMBL and AlphaFold; ToolUniverse covers far more ground overall; paper-search-mcp covers far more literature sources; Mobus also compares datasets and checks schema compatibility. More: docs/POSITIONING.md.
Reference and development
Every tool and parameter, the HTTP transport (--transport http) and the
environment variables:
docs/reference.md.
Sources that need every word of a query, and how they are searched:
every-word sources.
Tests, linting and the live API probes:
CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
MIT. See LICENSE.
Comments
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