ScienceDirect Basic Search

Search for academic papers on ScienceDirect using Chrome DevTools MCP.

Important: Determine the ScienceDirect base URL

Before the first operation, check the current browser page URL to determine which ScienceDirect domain the user is accessing. Store it as BASE_URL. Common patterns:

• Direct access: https://www.sciencedirect.com
• Institutional proxy: URL containing sciencedirect in the hostname (e.g. WebVPN or EZProxy)

Use whatever origin the user's browser is currently on. If no ScienceDirect page is open, ask the user which URL to use.

Steps

Step 1: Navigate to search results

Use navigate_page to go to:

{BASE_URL}/search?qs={QUERY}&show=25

Where {QUERY} is the URL-encoded search keywords from $ARGUMENTS.

Important: Always include initScript to prevent bot detection:

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

Step 2: Check access

After navigation, verify the page loaded correctly:

• 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, 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.
• Otherwise, proceed.

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 3: Extract search results

Use evaluate_script with built-in waiting. Do NOT use wait_for — it returns the full page snapshot which can exceed token limits (250K+ chars) on ScienceDirect pages.

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 4: Present results

Format results as a numbered list:

Found {totalResults}. {pageInfo}

1. {title}
   Authors: {authors}
   Journal: {journal} | {date}
   DOI: {doi} | PII: {pii}
   Type: {articleType} | Open Access: {yes/no}

2. ...

Key CSS Selectors

Element	Selector
Result items	li.ResultItem
Title link	a.result-list-title-link
Journal link	a.subtype-srctitle-link
Authors	.Authors .author
Date	.srctitle-date-fields > span (last span)
DOI	data-doi attribute on li.ResultItem
Article type	.article-type
Open access indicator	.access-label
Total results	.search-body-results-text
Checkbox (for batch ops)	.checkbox-input (id = PII)
Next page link	.next-link a

URL Parameters

Param	Description	Example
qs	Query string	deep learning
show	Results per page	25, 50, 100
offset	Pagination offset	0, 25, 50
sortBy	Sort order	date (omit for relevance)

Notes

• Results include PII identifiers needed for detail extraction, PDF download, and citation export.
• Each result checkbox id equals the PII, used for batch export/download.
• This skill performs at most 2 tool calls: navigate_page + evaluate_script.