Quick Reference Guide

www.scopus.com

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature with
bibliometrics tools to track, analyze and visualize research. It contains over 21,000 titles
from more than 5,000 publishers around the world, covering the fields of science,
technology, medicine, social sciences, and Arts & Humanities. Scopus has 50 million
records dating back to 1823, 84% of these containing references dating from 1996.

An eye on global research.

 Document Search
With Scopus, you can easily start your search from the homepage. Ensure that you quickly access the article you want by using the detailed search
options offered.

Starting a Search
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Document Search 1
This tab is the main search window of the homepage.
To begin, enter the search terms in the space
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provided. (See the box on page 8 for input rules for
search terms.) 4

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Author Search
Choose the Author Search tab to search for 6 7
a specific author by name.

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Affiliation Search
Choose the Affiliation Search to search for a
specific affiliation.

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Boolean Operators
Select from AND, OR, AND NOT to combine
search terms.

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Search Items
Select which fields you wish to search.
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Limit to Section 10
Control search by limiting to: published years,
recently added, document type and subject area.

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Add Search Field Search History Combine Queries Set Alerts or RSS Feeds
When searching using multiple keywords and search When you return to the search In the Combine Queries box in Search Select ‘Set Alert’ to receive
items, click Add search field button. window after carrying out a search, history, you can enter the list number email alerts or ‘Set feed’ to
your search history will be displayed of each search you want to combine, receive RSS updates.
at the bottom. The search history is using the # symbol. You can use the
2 cleared for each new session. AND, OR, and AND NOT operators.
 Sorting Options and Refining a Search
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Search Alert
Notifies you by email or RSS feed when
a new article that matches your search
conditions is listed (requires login).
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Analyze Results
Click to see an analysis of your results,
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showing the number of documents broken
down by various criteria, including year,
source, author, affiliation, and so on. 6

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Search within Results
Add additional terms to your search by 8
directly entering them here.

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Refine Results Sort Options Batch Processing Results More
Using the Refine Results pane, you can limit By default, search results are Download: Batch download multiple View references: Displays all documents
your results list to or certain categories of listed by publication year. Sort on PDF files and automatically assign them referenced by the article.
documents. For example, you may want Cited-by, Relevancy and Author names based on specified rules. The file
Add to my list: Adds the articles to a
to limit the display to documents from a name are options. names can be a combination of author,
temporary list. Later, you can check
certain author, or to those published in a publication year, article title, journal, and
them from the My list menu or save the
certain year. You can also exclude certain so on. The maximum number of files you
list under a new name.
documents from the results list. can download at one time is 50 if PDF is
8 available. Java required. Create bibliography: Change the output
Link to Full Text to typical reference list format.
Export: Export bibliographic information
By clicking View at publisher, you can Email: Sends the articles as an email.
5 as RIS RefWorks, format (for document
link to the full text on each publisher’s
Number of Search Results management programs such as EndNote), Print: Displays the articles in a format
website if authorized.
The number of documents is shown. text format, BibTeX format, and Excel suited for printing.
format. If you are using RefWorks, you
can link seamlessly by embedding your
RefWorks ID/PW in the My settings menu.
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View citation overview: Analyze documents
Display Document Details Page that cite the selected articles. See page 5.
By clicking the article title you can show
the document details (the abstract and View cited by: Displays all documents that
referenced works) of the article. cite the selected articles.

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 Using Abstract Pages
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Link to Full Text
By clicking View at Publisher, you can link to the
full text on each publisher’s website. 1
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Link to Author Details Page 2
Links to author’s details page.

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Keywords
Author keywords and keywords assigned from 7
thesauri are shown in the Author keywords and
Indexed keywords fields.

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References
A list of references cited by this article are
displayed in the References field. You can use
links from here to the abstract pages.
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Citing Documents
In the Cited by since 1996 field, the most recent 4
two works to cite this article are shown. You
can also display all documents.

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Document Citation Alert
Set to alert you via email (Set alert) or RSS 8
feed (Set feed) when this document is cited
in another article. (Requires login) Altmetric
Altmetric for Scopus is a 3rd party web
application. You can see all of the social or
mainstream media mentions gathered for a
7 particular paper as well as reader counts on
Search for Related Articles popular reference managers.It will only appear
Search for articles sharing the same references, in the sidebar when there is data available for
authors, or keywords as this article. the article that you are currently viewing.

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 Analysis
Citation Overview
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Number of Cited Documents 3

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Total Citations
Per reference, total citatation counts by year.

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View Citation Overview on Author Profile 1
The same display option is available at the Scopus 2 4
author profiles: Author name, Affiliation, Name
Country, Document type, and Subject area.

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View Citation Overview
Analyze citations by clicking View citation overview.
This will display, in table format, the number of
citations per year for each article. This multipurpose
tool allows you to see at a glance the citation trend
for any given article.

Analyze Results
On a given search, users can click the Analyze results button and a window
opens with several tabs. Each tab in the Analyze results window contains a set
of graphical displays and charts that can be manipulated to better understand
the search metrics. Additionally, the graphics offer contextual boxes that give
insight on specific points along the graph. 6

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Analyze Results
The link to analyze results can be found on the
Results page. 5

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Search Metrics
Search metrics are organized by the following: Year,
Source title, Author name, Affiliation name, Country,
Document type, and Subject area.

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 Journal Analyzer
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Analytics
Click the Analytics tab to start.

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Search for Journals 2
Search by entering part of the candidate journal 3
name in the Search box.

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Evaluation Indices
Compare and evaluate the journals from
various perspectives.

SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) Using an algorithm

similar to that for Google® PageRank, this
prestige metric index weights citations by
the quality of the citing journal and allows 4
comparison between fields.

SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)

Taking the ease of citation by field into account,
this index adjusts the citation ratio and allows
comparison between journals in different fields.

Citations The total number of citations a journal

receives per year.

Docs (Documents) The total number of articles

published by a journal per year.

Percent Not Cited The percentage of articles

published each year that have not been
cited previously.

Percent Reviews The percentage of articles

in a journal that are categorized as a review
type article.

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Select Journal
Double-click the journal you wish from the
search results or drag and drop it to the right-
hand frame. You can select up to 10 titles.
For more information visit www.journalmetrics.com

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 Author Tools
Scopus allows you to analyze citation metrics on authors as well as specific articles by an author.
From the author ID you can display all articles by that author, documents that cite the author, h-index and more.

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Starting an Author Search

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Author Search 3
Select Author Search tab to search by author name.

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Author Name 5 8
Enter surname and initials or given name of author in
Author box and a list of authors that may match will ORCID Citations in Other Documents
be shown. You can also search in combination with Add documents to your ORCID (Open Research and In the Citations field, check which documents cite
his/her affiliation. Contributor Identifier) profile and/or create your ORCID profile. this author’s articles. Analyze the citations of all this
author’s articles from View citation overview. Login
to set an Author Citation Alert email when author’s
articles are cited.
Author Profile 6
Author Profile
Displays the author’s articles, documents that cite the
3 author, h-index, and can analyze the citations. 9
Display Author Profile h-index
Clicking on the author’s name will show the
This is an index that evaluates the author from the
author profile. 7 number of published works and number of citations in
Article Information other documents, and is shown as h for articles that
In the Documents field, check all articles by this author. Using have been cited more than h times since 1996. This can
4 Author evaluator, show the author’s research results as be displayed as a graph from View h-graph.
Request author detail correction graphs from a number of different aspects. Login to set an
You can request for a correction of the author profile e.g. search alert via email or RSS feed when this author publishes
to update the affiliation you are based on. another article.

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 Registration Search Term Rules
General Rules
• Not case sensitive

Using Personal Functions • Entering singular nouns will also search for plural nouns and possessives
(with some exceptions)
By registering as a user, you are able to set up useful • Entering either variation of Greek letters (a OR alpha, b OR beta,)
personal functions such as email alerts. Your username will search for both variations
and password are the same as for ScienceDirect and • Entering either British or American spellings (colour, color, or tyre, tire)
Engineering Village. You only need a single sign-on. will search for both variations

Login Phrase Search

If you already have a username and password then click Login and enter
• Multiple words set off by spaces will be processed with the AND operator.
them in the login box. If you check Remember me, your login information
will be stored in your computer and you will be permanently logged in. • To search as a phrase, enclose it in double quote marks or curly brackets.
• Double quotes “ ” will search for fuzzy phrases. It will also search for both singular
User Registration and plurals (with some exceptions). Symbols are ignored. Wildcards can be used.
To register as a new user, click Register. Enter the required information, “heart-attack” will search for heart-attack, heart attack, heart attacks, and so on
such as your name and email address, in the registration window. • Curly brackets { } will search for a specific phrase. It limits the search
to only the specified character string, and symbols can be used.
Alerts {heart-attack} will only search for heart-attack
You can create and manage email alerts to stay up to date in your field.
Search Alert
Wildcards
Author Citation Alert
• * replaces any number of characters
Document Citation Alert toxi* will search for toxin, toxic, toxicity, toxicology, and so on
• ? replaces only one character
Check My List sawt??th will search for sawtooth and sawteeth
You can check your articles in the temporary list or the list you saved.

Change Individual Settings/Password Logical operators and proximity operators

You can change your email address, password, RefWorks username/ • And Searches for articles containing both words
password, and so on from the Settings menu. food And poison poison
• OR Searches for articles containing either or both words
Customize weather OR climate
Registered users can customize the look and behavior of their • AND NOT Searches for articles that do not contain the following words
Scopus search experience. tumor AND NOT malignant
• W/n Restricts to n words between the two words, the word order is not set
Pain W/5 morphine
• PRE/n Restricts to n words between the two words, the word order is as set
newborn PRE/3 screening
• Operator priority order (it is possible to change the priority order by using parentheses)
1. OR 2. W/n or PRE/n 3. AND 4. AND NOT

For more information on searching, see the in-product help files

8 or visit www.elsevier.com/scopus