In Scopus, you can search by Documents, Authors, or Affiliations. When you first access Scopus, by default it is set to carry out a 'Document' search, which will retrieve records containing your search terms in the fields that you specify. You should use this option if you wish to retrieve records for publications on a particular topic, or that meet other search criteria.
You can also choose to search for 'Authors' or 'Affiliations'. These options are useful if you would like to see a breakdown of publications by a particular author or organization, and other data relating to their publications.
💁♀️ (Tip) Look for 'Search History' at the bottom of the screen. Your search history is shown bottom of the screen with the options to create RSS feeds and alerts, and save, edit or delete queries. Combine queries from your history by entering the listed search number with Boolean operators.
Documents include journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, articles in press, and data papers.
[A] Enter your search terms into the search documents box. [B] You can specify in which fields to search using the drop-down menu. [C] Use the '+Add search field' option to add additional fields. Each new search field is combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. [D] To see a complete list of advanced field codes, select Advanced document search.
[A] On a search results page, the options ‘Edit’, ‘Save’, ‘Set alert’ and ‘Set feed’ are available for the query. [B] Sort results by date (default option), cited by, relevance, first author name or source title. [C] These options allow batch processing of all or selected results: export; download as PDF; view citation overview; view citing documents; save to temporary list; view references; bibliography; print; or send results as an email. [D] Click 'View abstract' to display the abstract. opens the full text on the publisher website, if authorized. Related documents displays referenced works.
💁♀️ (Tip) Analyze Search Results and View Citation Overview Clicking Analyze search results on a search results page shows the number of documents in your search results broken down by year, source, author, affiliation, country, document type and subject area.
When you search by affiliation, just type the affiliation's name. The search will begin to auto-populate. 'Affiliations Search' is mainly used with interest by research performance managers and executives. Still, researchers can also use it to understand the current status of institutions when studying abroad or thinking about career paths.
When you search by authors, you can search by last and/or the first name. You also have the option to search by ORCID ID.
By searching the author's name or ID, you can check the author's profile, the number of papers, and research results such as Citations and h-index. Click a name in the result list to open the Author profile.
[A] Use 'Set alert' to receive alerts about new publications. Click 'Potential author matches' to view and group together authors with similar profiles. [B] Click 'View h-Graph' to display the h-index as a graph. Click 'Analyze author output' to visualize their output as graphs. 'Citation overview' analyzes citations of their articles by publication year. [C] You can create an email alert to be notified when Scopus publishes new documents by an author. [D] Click ‘Export all’ to export an author’s document information to a selected file type or reference management tool such as EndNote, Mendeley, etc.
Use the ‘Sources’ page to browse the list of all journals, book series, trade publications and conference proceedings available on Scopus. You can search by title, subject area, publisher or ISSN.
