Alexandria

Alexandria is a application for managing a local store of scientific papers. Typically starting with a directory of PDFs, it extracts metadata (title, authors, year, DOI, journal) from the text of the PDF, consults CrossRef and OpenAlex, then presents a searchable, filterable card browser. Alexandria tries to make it easy to find and add related papers.

• Full-text search across title, authors, abstract, DOI and journal
• Citation counts and per-year sparklines from OpenAlex
• Built-in PDF viewer with highlight and comment annotations, and click-through citation links that jump to the reference
• A viewer sidebar with the paper's table of contents, page thumbnails and your highlights
• Structured full text (JATS XML) fetched from Europe PMC and stored beside the PDF
• Authors window: a persistent trail of the authors you follow, with their works, collaborators, funding and affiliation history
• Journal and topic subscriptions, flagging new papers by authors you have looked up before
• BibTeX, RIS and CSL export; BibTeX and DOI import
• Preprint detection (arXiv, bioRxiv, chemRxiv and more)
• Duplicate detection by DOI and file hash, with supporting information recognised as belonging to its parent paper
• An MCP server, so an AI assistant you already use can search and read your library — no model or API key inside the app
• Sidecar JSON metadata lives next to each PDF - so it's easily transportable