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easyScieloPak

easyScieloPak is an R package that allows you to search and access academic articles from SciELO programmatically.

Objective

The main goal of easyScieloPak is to simplify the process of querying SciELO from R by: - Making queries readable and reproducible. - Allowing filters like year, collection (country), language, journal, and subject category. - Handling pagination, data parsing, and cleaning automatically. - Providing clear and validated feedback when a query is incorrect. - Minimizing errors due to anti-scraping measures (e.g., 403 HTTP errors).

Features

• Build custom search queries for SciELO.
• Filter results by year, collection, language, and more.
• Retrieve article metadata including title, authors, publication year, and link.
• Designed with intuitive syntax.
• Intelligent request handling to avoid triggering SciELO’s anti-bot protection.

Installation

You can install the development version of easyScieloPak from GitHub using either devtools or remotes:

Using devtools

install.packages(“devtools”) devtools::install_github(“https://github.com/PabloIxcamparij/easyScieloPack.git”)

Or using remotes

install.packages(“remotes”) remotes::install_github(“https://github.com/PabloIxcamparij/easyScieloPack.git”)

library(easyScieloPak)

Create a query

library(easyScieloPak)

df <- search_scielo(“salud ambiental”, collections = “Ecuador”, languages = “es”, n_max = 5) head(df)

df <- search_scielo(“ecology”, collections = “Chile”, languages = “en”, n_max = 8)

View(df) # View results in RStudio

Current Limitations

• Each filter only supports one value at a time (e.g., only one country, language, journal, or category).

• Web scraping may be sensitive to structural changes in the SciELO website.

• The number of fetched articles is limited by n_max (default fallback is 100).

• No official API is available, so the package depends on website scraping.

• Rate-limiting / Blocking (403 errors): In some cases, SciELO may detect automated access and temporarily block the search, resulting in a 403 HTTP error. This is a common limitation of scraping. If this occurs, try the following:

  • Wait a few minutes before retrying.
  • Restart your R session or switch IP/network.
  • Avoid sending too many queries in a short period.

  Note: Reinstalling the package has no direct effect on the block.

-Default fallback limit: If the total number of available results cannot be determined, the query will default to fetching a maximum of 100 articles.

Recent Improvements -Rotating User-Agents: Each request uses a different User-Agent string (Chrome, Firefox, Safari variants) to appear more like a real browser and avoid blocking.

-Random delays between requests reduce server load and minimize scraping detection.

-Retry logic: If a request fails, the package retries automatically with a different User-Agent.

Planned Improvements

The current version of easyScieloPak is fully functional for basic academic exploration through SciELO. However, the following enhancements are planned for future versions:

• Support for multiple filter values: Currently, each filter (e.g., language, category, journal) only accepts a single value. Future versions aim to support multiple values for broader and more flexible queries (e.g., languages("es", "en", "pt")).

• Improved scraping resistance: We plan to implement smarter mechanisms to reduce the chances of triggering SciELO’s anti-scraping protections (e.g., rotating user agents, request throttling, caching mechanisms).

• Caching and offline mode: Possibility to cache previous search results locally for offline use or repeated queries.

• Enhanced error diagnostics: Provide clearer messages and helper functions when 403 or parsing issues occur.

• Journal/code normalization functions: Automatic mapping of journal names to their normalized internal identifiers.

About SciELO

SciELO is a multidisciplinary open-access platform hosting scientific journals from over 15 countries. It plays a vital role in disseminating research output from Latin America and beyond.

This package provides a lightweight, unofficial method to interact with SciELO’s search interface.

Disclaimer

• This package is not affiliated with or endorsed by SciELO.
• It relies on web scraping, and therefore may break if the HTML structure of SciELO changes.
• Use this tool responsibly, especially for automated queries.
• Please review SciELO’s terms of use before running large queries: https://www.scielo.org/en/sobre-o-scielo/

Contributing

Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests to improve functionality, usability, or documentation.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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