ScienceDirect Advanced Search

Perform a filtered search on ScienceDirect by constructing URL parameters directly.

URL Parameter Reference

Build the search URL as {BASE_URL}/search?{params}&show=25 using these parameters:

Param	Field	Example
qs	All fields (keywords)	machine learning
tak	Title, abstract or keywords	neural network
title	Title only	transformer
authors	Author name(s)	Hinton
pub	Journal or book title	Nature
date	Year or year range	2023 or 2020-2025
volume	Volume number(s)	5 or 7-11
issue	Issue number(s)	1 or 1-3
page	Page number(s)	55 or 1-9
docId	ISSN or ISBN	0957-4174
affiliations	Author affiliation	MIT
references	Cited references	Smith 2020

Multiple parameters can be combined. For example:

{BASE_URL}/search?tak=deep+learning&authors=LeCun&date=2020-2025&show=25

Steps

Step 1: Parse user intent

From $ARGUMENTS, identify which fields the user wants to filter on. Map natural language to URL parameters:

• "by author X" → authors=X
• "in journal Y" → pub=Y
• "from 2020 to 2025" / "since 2020" → date=2020-2025
• "about topic Z" → tak=Z or qs=Z
• "titled ..." → title=...

Step 2: Navigate

Use navigate_page to the constructed URL. Always include initScript to prevent bot detection:

initScript: "Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'webdriver', {get: () => undefined})"

Step 3: Check access

• If the page shows "Are you a robot" or captcha: auto-click the Cloudflare Turnstile checkbox using the procedure below. If auto-click fails after 2 attempts, tell the user "请在浏览器中完成验证后告知我。"
• If the URL no longer contains sciencedirect or search after navigation, the user may have been redirected to a login/authentication page. Tell the user: "页面被重定向，请在浏览器中完成登录或认证后告知我。" Then wait.

Cloudflare Turnstile auto-click procedure

When a captcha page is detected (title "请稍候…" or body contains "Are you a robot"):

1. Wait for the Turnstile iframe to load — use evaluate_script to poll for #captcha-box (up to 8s).
2. Take a snapshot — use take_snapshot to get the a11y tree. The checkbox is inside a cross-origin iframe but Chrome DevTools MCP can see it:

   Iframe "包含 Cloudflare 安全质询的小组件"
     checkbox "确认您是真人"   ← target uid
   

3. Click the checkbox — use click(uid) on the checkbox element.
4. Wait and verify — wait 3-5s, then check if document.contentType changed or the page URL changed (indicating success). If still on captcha, retry once or fall back to asking the user.

Step 4: Extract results

Use evaluate_script with built-in waiting (same as sd-search). Do NOT use wait_for — it returns oversized snapshots.

async () => {
  // Wait for results to load (up to 10s)
  for (let i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
    if (document.querySelector('li.ResultItem') || document.querySelector('.search-body-results-text')) break;
    await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 500));
  }

  const items = document.querySelectorAll('li.ResultItem');
  const papers = [];

  for (let i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
    const item = items[i];
    const titleLink = item.querySelector('a.result-list-title-link');
    const journal = item.querySelector('a.subtype-srctitle-link');
    const dateSpans = item.querySelectorAll('.srctitle-date-fields > span');
    const date = dateSpans.length > 1 ? dateSpans[dateSpans.length - 1].textContent.trim() : '';
    const authors = [...item.querySelectorAll('.Authors .author')].map(a => a.textContent.trim());
    const doi = item.getAttribute('data-doi');
    const pii = titleLink?.href?.match(/pii\/(\w+)/)?.[1] || '';
    const articleType = item.querySelector('.article-type')?.textContent?.trim() || '';
    const isOpenAccess = !!item.querySelector('.access-label');

    papers.push({
      rank: i + 1,
      title: titleLink?.textContent?.trim() || '',
      pii, doi: doi || '',
      journal: journal?.textContent?.trim() || '',
      date, authors, articleType, openAccess: isOpenAccess,
    });
  }

  const totalText = document.querySelector('.search-body-results-text')?.textContent?.trim() || '';
  const pageInfo = document.querySelector('.Pagination li:first-child')?.textContent?.trim() || '';
  return { papers, totalResults: totalText, pageInfo };
}

Step 5: Present results

Same format as sd-search. Additionally, show the applied filters at the top:

Search filters: author={X}, journal={Y}, year={Z}
Found {totalResults}. {pageInfo}

1. {title} ...

Notes

• URL parameter approach avoids form filling, keeping operations to 2 tool calls.
• All parameters are optional and combinable.
• If the user provides a very specific query (e.g., DOI or PII), consider using sd-paper-detail instead.