how to search research paper on scopus

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Scopus Search

Scopus quickly delivers the information you're looking for from over 92m records. Updated daily, Scopus features state-of-the-art search tools and filters to empower research efficiency.

Increase research efficiency

Having access to comprehensive content and high-quality data is only effective if you can easily find the information you need. Uncovering trends, discovering sources and potential collaborators, and building deeper insights require effective search tools that can identify the right results.

Identify trends for key topics

Scopus’ literature search is built to distill massive amounts of information down to the most relevant documents and information in less time.

With Scopus you can search and filter results in the following ways:

Document search : Search directly from the homepage and use detailed search options to ensure you find the document(s) you want

Author search : Search for a specific author by name or by Open Research and Contributor Identifier ID (ORCID)

Affiliation search : Identify and assess an affiliation’s scholarly output, collaborating institutions and top authors

Advanced search : Narrow the scope of your search using field codes, proximity operators and/or Boolean operators

Refine results : Scopus makes it easy to refine your results list to specific categories of documents

Language interface : The Scopus interface is available in Chinese and Japanese; content is not localized, but you can switch the interface to one of these language options (and switch back to English, the default language) at the bottom of any Scopus page

Quick reference guide

Learn how to easily start your search from the homepage and use all the features in Scopus with this handy Quick Reference Guide.

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Learn how Scopus can help your organization achieve its goals.

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Scopus LibGuide: Searching Scopus

• Become a registered user
• Searching Scopus
• Author profile
• Affiliation profile
• Help & Support

In Scopus, you can search by Documents, Authors or Organization. For details of the Author and Organization search please see the Author and Organization tabs.

Document search

Documents include journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, articles in press and data papers. Follow the steps below to learn how to perform a basic document search:

• By default, Scopus will search in the Article title, Abstract and Keywords of documents
• You can specify in which fields to search using the drop-down menu [2]
• Use the +Add search field [3]  option to add additional fields 
• Each new search field is combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT [4]
• Select Add date range [5] to either select a publication date range or to specify an "added to Scopus" date range
• To see a complete list of advanced field codes, select Advanced document search [6]
• Your Search History is displayed with the option to Set Alert [7] to notify you by email of new search results in Scopus that match that search
• Select More [8] to save an important query or to delete a query
• To combine queries from your history, choose two or more searches and select Combine queries [9]

Document results page

Editing your search, saving your search and setting alerts

• Saving your search and setting up alerts  [1]
• Quickly review or edit your search from the top of the page [2]
• By default, the search results are sorted by date. Use the ‘Sort by’ drop-down menu to sort in a different order. [3]

Refine your results [4]   From the left-hand menu, you can:

• Search within your results
• Author name
• Open Access type (learn more about the Open Access filter below)
• Subject area
• Publication stage
• Affiliation
• Funding sponsor

Registered users can sign in to:

• Save searches
• Set up alerts to be notified when new documents are added to Scopus that match this search
• Learn how to become a registered user

Export results

Export selected search results [5]   to various file types, reference managers and platforms : 

• RIS format (for import into EndNote

Analyze search results

Analyze Search Results button [6]

Use this feature to gain further insights into any list of document results.

Search Tips

Search Tips in Scopus

• loose phrase, use double quotation marks
• “heart attack” will search for documents where heart and attack appear together
• asterisk is a wildcard
• “criminal* insan*” finds criminally insane and criminal insanity. 
• exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces  { }

Note: {heart-attack} and {heart attack} return different results, as the first will search for results that contain a hyphen between heart and attack

• Discover more search tips in the Support Center A full guide to boolean and proximity operators, loose and exact phrases, special characters, and other search tips. 

Secondary documents

Scopus also features non-Scopus references, called ‘secondary documents’, which are not indexed in our database for three possible reasons:

• They are retrieved from the references or citations of the documents that are covered by Scopus
• Scopus is unable to match documents with certainty due to incomplete or incorrect data
• There is missing content

To view these non-Scopus references, click ‘S econdary documents ’ above your search results.

• Learn more about secondary documents

Cited reference search

Scopus provides the ability to search the list of cited references in articles, books, etc. If the reference which you are starting with is very relevant to your research, other related publications have probably cited references that are also relevant to your research. Cited reference searching is a useful extension to your standard keyword search.

• Learn how to perform a cited reference search

Open Access filters

Refine your results  [4]

On the document details page, you can filter by Open Access types,   including:

• All open access
• Gold: Documents that are in journals that only publish open access
• Hybrid Gold:  Documents that are in journals that provide authors the choice of publishing open access
• Bronze:  Published version of record or manuscript accepted for publication; the publisher has chosen to provide temporary or permanent free access
• Green:  Published version or manuscript accepted for publication, available at the repository
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• Last Updated: Apr 17, 2024 12:12 AM
• URL: https://elsevier.libguides.com/Scopus

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• HSL Academic Process
• Searching Scopus
• Using Scopus

Searching Scopus: Using Scopus

Created by health science librarians.

About Scopus

Basic search, advanced search, author name search, citation searching, creating alerts, exporting items to citation managers, analyzing results, create bibliography.

• Comparison between Scopus and Web of Science
• Journal Metrics
• Helpful Resources and Tutorials

Scopus is an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and web sources with tools to track, analyze, and visualize research. Scopus provides access to a broad portfolio of peer-reviewed content from around the world. 

Scopus includes the records from the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases, among other included sources. Scopus uses four broad subject areas:  Physical Sciences , Health Sciences , Social Sciences, and Life Sciences . 

Scopus allows users to:

• Search for articles, conference proceedings,trade publications, and book chapters on a topic
• Find author information, such as H-index, and lists of publications
• Locate Impact metrics for a journal title using SNIP, SJR, and CiteScore
• Perform citation searches on known articles
• Identify promising journals in which to publish
• Match an organization with its research output
• Locate potential collaborators or subject experts
• Manage your impact with your ORCID ID
• Set Citation Alerts

Search Form

Below is the Scopus search screen. Enter your first search term into the search field. If you have more than one concept to your search, select "Add Search Field" to add additional search fields, or conduct separate searches and combine them later using the "Search" button. 

Scopus does NOT have MeSH terms  or other subject headings on which to search. 

Scopus defaults to searching an article's Title, Abstract and Keywords.  You can change this in Advanced (see the tab to the left for information on Advanced searching).

Adapted from Rush University Library's  "Scopus User Guide"

On the Advanced search form, you can create a search using field codes, proximity operators, or boolean operators to narrow the scope of the search.

To create an advanced search, Click "Advanced Search" from the main search page

To search for keywords in an article's title or abstract, type in  TITLE-ABS before your search terms.  Be sure to use parentheses!  For example, this is correct:  (TITLE-ABS( children OR pediatrics))   but this is not correct:  TITLE-ABS children OR pediatrics

When doing a Boolean search, Scopus insists that parentheses be used correctly.  If you get a message about a Syntax Error, check your (( )).

Scopus needs Boolean operators (AND, OR) to be capitalized.  To exclude in Scopus, you must use AND NOT (not just 'NOT').

Scopus is a great place to look for information about a particular author's published works.    You can start your search for information on Scopus's main search page by clicking "Authors."  While Scopus is a compilation of peer-reviewed articles, it is not comprehensive, so keep in mind that you will only see information about the articles that have been indexed into Scopus.

Type in the author's last name, and first name if it will be helpful to locate them.  It is often a good idea to put an Affiliation as well.

The author's information will appear.  To see all their published work that has been indexed into Scopus, click the box in front of their name and then click "Show documents."

If you are checking on your own citations and notice that you have more than one listing, click "Request to merge authors."

If this is your information and there are multiple BOXES for your name, you can merge them by clicking the "Request to merge authors" link and following the steps.

For a visual representation of this author's work, click the box for All, then "View citation information."

• Scopus Advanced Search Video Tutorial

To find citation counts in Scopus

• Go to the  Scopus database
• Search by the document's title
• In the results list, look in the far-right hand column for the citation count.
• To see what documents cited the document, click on the citation count.

By registering as a Scopus user, you are able to create search, document, and author alert s to stay up-to-date at your desired frequency. Use these alerts to receive email notices when new documents are loaded on Scopus. From the Alerts page, you can create alerts, view the latest results for an alert, edit alerts, and delete alerts. There is no limit on the number of alerts you can create.

A Search alert is a saved search that you can schedule to run at certain intervals. If any new results are found, you will receive an email with the first 25 results and a link into Scopus to access all new results. You must be logged in to set an alert or work with your saved alerts.

To set a new search alert:

• From the  D ocument Search page, perform a new search. The Search results page opens.
• From the search results page, click  Set alert . The Set Alert pop-up appears.
• Set the frequency and day of week to start alerts.

To set an author alert:

• From the Author page, perform a new search. The Search results page opens.
• From the search results page, click an author's name. The author details page opens.
• From the author details page, click  Get citation alerts . The Set Alert Author Citation Alert pop-up opens.

To set a document alert:

• From the Document search page, perform a new search. The Search results page opens.
• From the search results page, click an document's name. The Document details page opens.
• From the Document details page, click  Set citation alerts . The Set Document Citation Alert pop-up opens.

To export items to SciWheel, EndNote, Zotero, or another citation manager, look in the grey bar (found at the top of your search results) for the words "RIS Export."   Note that you can also email citations (with links) to yourself in this bar.

You can export or email individual citations using the links in this bar, or you can save citations into a List and export/email the entire list at once by using the List function.  See "Saving Items in a List" in the tabs to the left for more information. 

The drop-down arrow next to "RIS Export" provides options for what information you'd like to export.  We recommend checking of all boxes so that all information is sent.

>Analyze Search Results

Scopus offers several built-in functions for analyzing search results.  You can find these options here:

The analysis tools provide a summary view of aspects of the search results, such as counts of publications:

• By document source (ex. Journal Title)
• By affiliation (author organization)
• By document type (ie. journal article, book chapter, etc.)
• And several other criterion

With Scopus, you can create a bibliography of articles on the fly. 

1. Select the articles in your search set that you would like to include in your bibliography. You can do this by checking off the boxes of the articles you want, or by using the "add to list" feature to just add those articles you want. When you add the articles to the list, your list will open. From there, select all. 

2.  Click on the three dots at the top right that indicate "more menu options".  Select the option "Create Bibliography".

3. Select which format you want (HTML or text) and select the appropriate citation style. Click on "Create Bibliography".

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• Last Updated: Aug 13, 2024 11:48 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/scopus

• Scopus: Access and use Support Center

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• Support Center

How can I best use the Advanced search?

An advanced search allows you to enter complex search queries using field codes, boolean and proximity operators to narrow the scope of your search.

Use boolean operators to combine different search queries and proximity operators to find words near/within a specified distance of each other.

Boolean operators - OR, AND, AND NOT

Rules for using Boolean operators:

• AND NOT e.g., KEY(mouse AND NOT cat OR dog) is interpreted as KEY((mouse) AND NOT (cat OR dog))
• AND NOT should always be used at the end of the query.
• To search for a specific phrase, enclose the terms in double quotes (" ") or for an exact match use braces ({}).

Proximity operators - W/ n , PRE/ n

You can choose between two Proximity operators to find words within a certain distance from each other: Pre/ n specifies a word order whereas W/ n does not.

Tips for proximity operators:

Operator order of precedence

Scopus does not run a search from left to right, but follows a combination of grouping rules and the operator order of precedence. If your search string contains multiple operators, Scopus follows the order of precedence:

• W/ n , PRE/ n

We recommend that you run your search string line-by-line using the basic search when using large string queries, especially ones containing multiple operators and proximity operators. Contact the Scopus: Access and use Support Center if you have further questions.

You can search for a term in a specific field by entering the field code in your advanced search.

• The search TITLE-ABS-KEY(prion disease) would return documents where the terms appear in the title, abstract or keywords.
• The search INDEXTERMS(prion disease) would return documents with the indexing term “prion disease”.
• Not using a field code, e.g.  (heart attack) , is the same as searching ALL(heart attack) .

There are only a limited number of field codes available to use on the Document search form.

• Not all documents contain all fields, so searching for specific fields could prevent some articles from appearing in your search results.
• You can enter field codes in upper or lowercase, but make sure to use the correct field code spelling (including hyphens).

All available field codes

Add authors or affiliations to an Advanced search

You can search for and add author names or affiliations to your search from the Advanced search form.

• If you know the unique author identifier / affiliation identifier you want to search for, you can enter it directly in the Advanced search form using the AU-ID / AF-ID field code.
• When using AUTHOR-NAME ( john AND smith ) , the search is looking for documents having both john and smith as a single author. If you are looking for a larger set of results, the more appropriate search thread would be AUTHOR-NAME ( john ) AND AUTHOR-NAME ( smith ) , as this search looks for both names anywhere within a document.
• FOR AUTHORS: On the Make Author or Affiliation Selection page, enter the author's last name and, if available, the first name or initial. Select 'Show exact matches only' to find authors that match exactly the name you entered in the Author Last Name and Initials or First Name fields.
• FOR AFFILIATIONS: In the Affiliation field, enter your affiliation search criteria, such as the affiliation name and location.
• Select the search icon. A second Scopus page opens providing author search results.
• Select individual check boxes of author names/affiliations that you want to include in your Advanced search.
• Select 'All' to select all authors from the results list.
• Select 'Select page' to select all authors/affiliations on the current page of results.
• Select a selected check box to remove that author/affiliation from the selection.
• Select 'Add to search' to add selected authors/affiliations to your Advanced search. The Advanced search form updates with the author search field code.

Find authors in references

You can use the REFAUTH field in conjunction with the REF field to find reference authors.

Find affiliations in references

A document can contain many references and may contain more than one affiliation. When you search for affiliations (AFFIL field) or references (REF field), you can specify if you want all of your search terms to be found in the same reference or affiliation.

There are two ways of searching for phrases, an exact search and a loose/approximate phrase, depending on how exact a match you want to find.

Loose/approximate phrases

Double quotation marks are important when searching for a loose/approximate phrase.

• Loose phrase: TITLE-ABS-KEY( "heart attack") searches for documents where heart attack appear together in the title, abstract, or keywords.
• Not a loose phrase: TITLE-ABS-KEY( heart attack) searches for documents where heart and attack appear together or separately in the title, abstract, or keywords.
• Dots and hyphens are treated as intentional. When a dot/hyphen is used, it is ignored and the search terms are treated as a loose phrase
• heart-attack or heart.attack is searched as "heart attack"
• Wildcards work: "criminal* liab*" finds criminally liable and criminal liability .
• Plurals and spelling variants are included: heart attack includes heart attacks , anesthesia includes anaesthesia .
• Double quotation marks can be used to search specifically for stop words and special characters: "crocodiles with alligators" will return results such as: Crocodiles with alligators are among the largest reptiles .
• title-abs-key (*/art) is searched as title-abs-key(art)
• abs(iwv-*) is searched as abs(iwv)

Exact phrase

To find documents that contain an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces: {oyster toadfish} .

RESULT: This includes any stop words , spaces, and punctuation which you included in the braces. For example:

• {heart-attack} and {heart attack} will return different results because the dash is included.
• Wildcards are searched as actual characters, e.g., {health care?} returns results such as: Who pays for health care?

The following error messages alert you to problems with your Advanced search.

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Related Articles:

• How to use advanced search tutorial
• Scopus tutorials
• How do I search in Scopus?
• What is the Scopus Author Identifier?
• How do I work with document search results?

For further assistance:

Research Guides

Mat136 - searching for articles.

• Searching for Articles using Scopus and Web of Science
• How to Read Academic Articles
• Peer-Reviewed or Refereed Journals
• Contact the Librarian - Consultations and Search Help

Introduction to Scopus and Web of Science

Scopus and Web of Science are the two largest interdisciplinary abstract and citation databases of peer-reviewed literature in the sciences.  They both contain 10s of thousands of articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. 

Not everything contained in Scopus or Web of Science is full-text or comes from a scholarly publication. This guide will show you how to find full-text articles and how to identify the scholarly publications.

Scopus and Web of Science overlap a great deal in the publications they cover, but there are differences in their content.  If you are not finding what you want in one of the databases, try your search with the other.

Scopus and Web of Science are very similar in the way they function and how they direct you in your search for articles.  This guide will focus on searching for articles in Scopus, but the same method can be used when searching Web of Science. 

Finding Scopus and Web of Science

To use Scopus and Web of Science, you have to go to the University of Toronto Library's website.  You can access our webpage from www.library.utoronto.ca.

From the library page, go to Advanced Search and select "Databases".  Links to Scopus and Web of Science can be found at the bottom the "Popular Databases" page.

Start your Search

When you are starting your search, think of the terms you might use to locate articles of interest to you. 

NOTE:  The broader the search term, the more results you will get.  For instance, in the example shown below, if only the search term "economics" was used, over 60,000 articles would have appeared on the "document results" list.

Making your search more specific brings up a more manageable set of search results.  In this instance, using the search terms "economics" and "farming" directed Scopus to narrow down the search to articles dealing only with the economics of farming.

For the purposes of this assignment, it will serve you best to limit your search to the "Title, Abstract, Keyword" option.  This will instruct Scopus to look for your search terms in the title of the article, in the abstract of the article, and the in keywords of the article.  The abstract of the article is a short summary of what the article is about and the keywords are search terms connected to the article that are often supplied by the author.

Further Refining your Search

In this example, using the search terms "economics" and "farming" still resulted in almost 5,000 records. Scopus gives you options to further refine your search and narrow down the results.  For your purposes, you can further refine your search to years the articles were published (you might just want search through the 5 most recent years); subject areas to further focus your search on your area of interest; and/or document type to limit your results to articles only.

After Identifying an Article of Interest

Neither Scopus nor Web of Science will allow you to search for differential equations or integrals within an article, so when you have identified an article of interest you will have to skim the text of the article to see if it includes the math you need for this assignment.  You can only have access to the full-text of articles if you see the "full-text" button under the title of the article.  If the article you are looking at does not contain differential equations or integrals, you can access articles similar to the one you have chosen by clicking on the title of the article or clicking on the "related documents" link. 

References and Citations

When you click on the title of the article, you will be taken to a page that shows you the abstract and keywords of the article.  This page also features links to the articles that the author used for her/his own research (references) and articles published more recently that have used the paper as a reference (cited by).  If the article you have chosen does not have the necessary math within it, you might find what you are looking for by scanning the papers included in the references and cited by links.

Web of Science

Searching for articles in Web of Science is fundamentally the same as searching in Scopus.  Like Scopus, Web of Science allows you to limit your search results, retrieve full-text articles, and have access to "references" and "cited by" links. 

Note: There is difference in some of the terminology used by the two databases.  In Web of Science, " Topic " will perform the same search that " Title/Abstract/Keywords " performs in Scopus.

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Scopus user guide: Searching Scopus

• Become a registered user
• Searching Scopus
• Author profile
• Affiliation profile
• Help & Support

In Scopus you can search by Documents, Authors or Affiliations.

Document search

Documents include journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, articles in press and data papers. Follow the steps below to learn how to perform a basic document search:

• By default, Scopus will search in the Article title, Abstract and Keywords of documents
• You can specify in which fields to search using the drop-down menu [2].
• Use the +Add search field [3] option to add additional fields
• Each new search field is combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT [4]
• To see a complete list of advanced field codes, select Advanced document search [5]

Author search

When you search by authors, you can search by last and/or first name. You also have the option to search by ORCID iD.

• Start your author search

Document results page

Refine search results

Refine your results [2]

From the left-hand menu, you can:

• Search within your results
• Select only open access documents (learn more about the Open Access filter below)
• Access Type
• Publication Year
• Affiliation
• Author Name
• Subject Area

Analyze search results

Analyze Search Results button [4]

Use this feature to gain further insights into any list of document results.

Cited reference search

Scopus provides the ability to search the list of cited references in articles, books, etc. If the reference which you are starting with is very relevant to your research, other related publications have probably cited references which are also relevant to your research. Cited reference searching is a useful extension to your standard keyword search.

• Learn how to perform a cited reference search

Search tips

Search Tips in Scopus

• loose phrase, use double quotation marks “heart attack” will search for documents where heart and attack appear together
• asterisk is a wildcard “criminal* insan*” finds criminally insane and criminal insanity.
• exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces  { }

Note: {heart-attack} and {heart attack} return different results, as the first will search for results that contain a hyphen between heart and attack

• Discover more search tips in the Support Center A full guide to boolean and proximity operators, loose and exact phrases, special characters, and other search tips.

Limit your search

Filter options:

• Choose from 'All years' or a range of years by using the drop down arrows (the default is 'All years')
• Specify 'Anytime' or within the last 7, 14 or 30 days by using the drop down arrow (the default is 'Anytime')

Affiliation search

When you search by affiliation, just type the affiliation's name. The search will begin to auto-populate.

• Start your affiliation search

Saving your search and setting alerts

Saving your search and setting up alerts [1]

Quickly review or edit your search from the top of the page. Registered users can sign in to:

• Save searches
• Set up alerts to be notified when new documents are added to Scopus that match this search

Learn how to become a registered user

Export results

Export selected search results [3] to:

• RIS format (for import into EndNote)

Open Access filters

On the document details page, you can filter by Open Access types, including:

• Gold open: Documents that are in journals which only publish open access
• Hybrid Gold: Documents that are in journals which provide authors the choice of publishing open access
• Bronze: Published version of record or manuscript accepted for publication; the publisher has chosen to provide temporary or permanent free access
• Green: Published version or manuscript accepted for publication, available at repository

Secondary documents

Scopus also features non-Scopus references, called ‘secondary documents’, which are not indexed in our database for three possible reasons:

• They are retrieved from the references or citations of the documents that are covered by Scopus
• Scopus is unable to match documents with certainty due to incomplete or incorrect data
• There is missing content

To view these non-Scopus references, click ‘ View secondary documents ’ above your search results.

• Learn more about secondary documents
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• Last Updated: Apr 11, 2024 10:07 AM
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The following steps outline how you can do a cited reference search in Scopus :

1. Enter a few citation details into the main search page . The most efficient way to search is to enter the article title in the first box. In the next search box, enter the author's last name.

2. In the search results, the record for the proper citation will display how many times this article has been cited according to Scopus . This number can differ from Web of Science and Google Scholar .

3. Click on the Find It button to access the full-text. If the Library does not have access to the article, you can request the article through Interlibrary Loan .

For more information  about cited reference searching and general tips on using Scopus , consult the interactive tutorials from Scopus .

Science librarians can help you identify and use scientific resources. Go to the Ask a Librarian page for assistance via email, chat, or phone. 

Or, request a special training session on any topic for small groups or individuals.

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Open sourcetools

Using Scopus to thoroughly search scientific literature

• by Vicenzo Vignieri
• 6 minute read

Writing a paper or a project that makes an impact requires building on existent literature on a specific field and contribute to such knowledge. Searching relevant and critical literature is not an easy activity since it entails filtering high quality works. This does not imply including only well know-known sources and authors, while disregarding emerging sources and authors. On the contrary, a robust literature review has to include those published articles and books that are relevant to the research area on which the work aims to contribute. Relevant – in this case – means fundamental and groundbreaking. To this end, a scholarly search tools may provide an invaluable support in limiting the probability to perform a scattered literature review. Also, when searching for valuable contribution within a huge amount of works, efficiency is a priority. Being able to search in trustworthy and authoritative database saves valuable time that would otherwise be spent cross-checking multiple databases and having to confirm results. Major players on this market are google scholars, Web of Science, and Scopus.

Recently, I started using Scopus to discover relevant literature. What I like of this search engine is the full integration with major publishers, the availability of advanced search tools and analytical instruments. It has as an easy-to-use user interface and works smoothly with Mendeley desktop (the Elsevier reference manager). Also, Scopus includes interdisciplinary literature, across all research fields, so the probability of missing key research information is greatly reduced.

In this article I review main features of Scopus and discuss how some of them can improve the workflow of a scholar when searching and analyzing the literature. In doing this, I will perform a search on Rural Reneration, which is a public policy aimed at promoting a the renaissance of the countryside.

What is scopus?

Scopus is a source-neutral abstract and citation database, run by Elsevier. It places powerful discovery and analytics tools in the hands of researchers, librarians, institutional research managers and funders. At the most basic level, Scopus is a search engine through which a person can get access to critical research outputs from around the world. It indexes content from 24.600 active journals from 5.000 publisher and 194.000 books. This amount of works sum up a total of 75.000 million of items. Scopus is not a free service, however most academic institutions are subscribers of Elsevier publishing services and offers federated access to Scopus through the institutional email.

How Scopus Work

Scopus is a search engine that get access to thousands of sources and delivers all metadata as provided by publishers for all its indexed content, including: Author(s), Affiliation(s), Document title, Year, Source title, Volume/ issue/ pages, Citation count(s), Source, Document type, Digital object identifier (DOI). As Gillian Griffiths remarked, it’s important to know that the data in Scopus is highly structured; every piece of information is tagged, even down to the initials of the author in a reference inside an article’s list of references. This is what ensures that your search will be precise and return reliable results, and also differentiates Scopus from web search engines. A search query on Scopus can refined using:

• boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT;
• proximity operators;
• wildcards (searching behav* finds behave, behavior, behaviour, behavioural, behaviourism)
• restriction (field, journal, author, country, affilitiation, source, type of source, etc…);

For a more detailed explanation on how to use Scopus advanced search option visit this page https://dev.elsevier.com/tips/ScopusSearchTips.htm

walkthrough: searching literature in Scopus

The search OR How to search on Scopus, for better indexing this article on google 🙂

The search bar of Scopus is clean, modern, and easy to use. To begin with, I have searched two terms Rural AND Regeneration (figure 2) within article title, abstract, and keywords. Since this topic is very specific, this search query generate only 934 raw results (figure 2). However, using the operator OR together with the previous search query lead to a total amount of 1605 raw results.

After performing a search it is time to clear the search results.

Filtering search results

Filtering search result means limiting or excluding some records from our analysis. The first step is limiting the scope of the search according to the field of interest, and then the source (the journal where the research has been published). To this end, there’s a sidebar on the left hand side of scopus website. It is also possible to filter results according to the year and some other parameters. In this case, I have limited the scope of the research on Social Sciences and to those journal which are close to my field of interest (Public Management, Public Policy). As figure 4 shows, the search query can be limited according to subjects. In this case I ticked SOCIAL SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENT, BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT together with journal sources (figure 5) like  Rural Society, European Planning Studies, Journal Of Urban Regeneration And Renewal, Journal Of Rural Development, Journal Of Urban Affairs, Journal Of Urban Planning And Development, Local Government Studies, Public Administration And Development . The combination of both has reduced results from 1605 to only 24 results.

Refining your search queries based on raw results

Although the search query and the filters have reduced the number of references, going through these results shows that the search query and related filters were not properly defined. Why? I know that in the field of Rural Regeneration there are some relevant piece of works written by a couple of authors and they are not included in this list. I’m missing something, for sure. Hence, I decided to make a new search. using a search query which is more targeted to the topic I’m looking at.

From the main page, I have searched for Title, Abstract, and Keyword containing exactly the two words “Rural Regeneration” or – alternatively – “Rural Renewal”. Using a more semantic, and rational search query I get 105 results, more than afore mentioned search. This search can be further filtered to specific subject areas (figure 6) such as Social Sciences, Environmental Science, Business Management and accounting. These areas are ordered based on the number or records. Including these, increases the number of search results goes down from 105 to 83 results. This is consistent with the idea of a funnel, as a metaphor representing the tension toward the need of increasing the focus on a research area.

Once the filters work properly, we can narrow down using journals . However this is not the case, since the number of records can be scrutinized one-by-one. To this end, Scopus can directly fetch abstract and keywords for each article (figure 7), so to read them and continue to refine the search.

At this point we can mark those articles of our interest and download them. The entire list of results can be downloaded directly from Scopus and if the journal are included in your institutional subscription, you will download the paper too. Results can be also ordered according to the number of citations or the date of publication. Also, if you are a Mendeley user, those selected results can be immediately imported into your reference manager with a click on RIS export menu, and then select Mendeley. For Systematic Literature Review purposes, results can be downloaded as csv – for using in excel or Plateau – or in few other formats. At this point we have a group of peer-reviewed articles to be analyzed.

Analyzing search results

Scopus offers useful tools for analyzing search results. These can be easily accessed by clicking on the corresponding button, as showed in the figure below.

Such tools make possible to look at different elements (figure 9) of our list of results. These elements include: the frequency of publication over time, source, author, affiliation, country, document type, subject area, and funding sponsor.

Using these tools we can have an overview of most influential authors on a particular topic. In this case, Prof. Stephen P. Osborne has the highest number of published works (figure 10) covering rural regeneration, limiting the search to Social Sciences, Environmental Science, Business Management and accounting.

This is just one example of how to use the Analyze results tool, there are numerous ways you can use it to help identify key research insights. Scopus, alike other search engine, is just a means to discover relevant literature on a particular topic. The remainder is a desk work: reading, understanding, and connecting thoughts and ideas across these articles. To explore the benefits and the possibilities given by scopus, I suggest to look at some videos and articles on Scopus blog . They provided me search tips and insights on how to make research more effective through Scopus, not only in terms of search queries. Take a look at these!

• Academic Search engine
• Search literature

Vicenzo Vignieri

Vincenzo Vignieri is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Law and Business Studies, University of Siena (Italy), where he teaches Business Administration. Formerly, he served as an Adjunct Professor in Business and Public Management at the Department of Political Sciences and International Relations, University of Palermo (Italy), where he taught Business Administration, Business Performance Analysis, and Performance Management in programs at master and doctoral level. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Management and Governance from the University of Palermo. During his Ph.D. studies, he spent a term at the University of Bergen (Norway) and the Radboud University of Nijmegen (Netherlands). He also has been visiting scholar at the University of Baltimore (USA). Main research areas cover Business and Public Management with a priority focus on performance management and policy analysis in cross-boundary settings, public service co-production, urban and rural regeneration, local development, and open innovation. In these research fields, he uses the System Dynamics Methodology as a method enabling a better understanding of complex social systems behavior. In these domains, Vincenzo Vignieri has published several articles in academic and professional journals. He also has experience as a policy analyst for the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Italian Agency for Territorial Cohesion.

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Use the 'Documents' search option to search for publications on a particular topic, or other search criteria.

• Enter your first search term in the search box.
• Choose the field you wish to search from the drop-down menu. If you are searching for records on a particular subject or topic you can leave this as the default Article title, Abstract, Keywords .
• To add more search fields click on the + add search field button.
• Choose date limits if required with add date range . Then hit Search.

Document search tips

• The search is not case sensitive.
• A hyphen is considered a space.
• Scopus will automatically search for some variations on words, such as plurals, e.g. criterion will find criteria .
• ‘Stop words’ such as 'the', 'his', 'because' are ignored, unless the phrase is enclosed in quotation marks "".
• The question mark  ? symbol will replace a single character, while an asterisk  * will replace multiple characters, e.g. wom?n will find women or woman ; colour* will find colourful , coloured , etc.
• Boolean searching is available – choose from the drop down boxes when search fields are added, or type in the operators ( AND , OR , AND NOT ).
• Take care if using multiple operators as they are processed in the following order of precedence: OR, AND, AND NOT.

How to conduct a basic search

Scopus 'How to conduct a basic search' tutorial video .

Search operators explained

The search operators AND and OR are used in searching to combine search terms together.

AND retrieves articles which contain all of your concepts. For example, if you are interested in the use of cognitive behaviour therapy for gambling disorders, you would search for cognitive behaviour therapy AND gambling.

OR retrieves records which contain any of your concepts. For example, you might search for cognitive behaviour therapy OR CBT to retrieve all articles on the topic.

How to search for a phrase in SCOPUS

There are two different ways to search for phrases in Scopus, a loose phrase or an exact phrase.

• Using "quotation marks" will search for a loose phrase, where the words appear together in a fixed order. By default, Scopus automatically includes common variant spellings (eg US/UK) and most plural forms in the search. A loose phrase search can include wildcards, eg "wind turbine*" to match "wind turbine" or "wind turbines"; other punctuation is ignored. Be careful if copy-pasting - Scopus only recognises standard quotation marks "", not smart quotation marks “” which are often added by word processors.
• To search for an exact phrase, use {curly brackets}. This will search only for the exact words as given, ignoring spelling variation or plurals. It will also force matching for punctuation.

"blue bird" = blue bird , blue birds , blue-bird

{blue bird} = blue bird only

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Scopus and Manifold

Scopus is an extensive abstract and citation database that provides comprehensive coverage of peer-reviewed journals, books, conference abstracts, and patents across the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Using Scopus, you can:

Create customized searches for peer-reviewed literature across many disciplines

• View citations to journal articles
• Access the full text of documents provided by subscriptions through the University Libraries
• View profiles for authors indexed by Scopus, which include measures of scholarly impact like h-index and publication counts

This wealth of available data makes Scopus useful for searching for literature that can help you with your research and determining the impact of scholarly works. 

Searching in Scopus

You can search Scopus for documents, authors, and affiliations, as well as create advanced searches customized to your needs.

Searching for documents On the Scopus home page, you can search for documents based on search terms provided in article titles, keywords, publication names, and many other facets. To begin, enter your search terms in the field provided and use the dropdown box to specify which fields to search.   

You can repeat this process to include additional search terms in different fields. You also have the option to specify date range, document type, and subject areas for the returned results. When you complete your search, the results are presented in a list as shown below.

From this view, you can sort results, refine the results, export and download records, and access complete records for publications. Clicking on a result title opens the full Scopus record for the publication. To access the full text of a record, you can click the Full Text Options to get to the Find It or View at Publisher buttons.

Searching for authors To search for authors, click the Author search tab above the search box. 

Here you can search for authors and documents they have published based on name, keyword, and even ORCID . 

You can also narrow your search by exact matches only or by limiting results to specified subject areas. Each author returned in the results list links to a page that profiles their publications and citations as well as provides measures of their scholarly impact.

Searching for affiliations To search for affiliations (i.e., institutions), click the Affiliation search tab above the search box. 

Here, you can search by institution name, such as University of Minnesota.

Results from this search link to affiliation profiles that provide access to documents and authors associated with the respective institution. In addition, these profiles provide some statistics of an affiliation’s scholarly output, including documents by subject area, documents by publication source, and collaborating institutions.

Creating advanced searches Scopus provides the option of creating advanced searches to customize the results that are returned. To do this, click the Advanced search tab above the search box. 

In this page, you are provided a text box where you can specify all the parameters of your search using the field codes listed.

Getting full text

When using Library resources, the FindIt link is your connection to accessing the full text of articles if a PDF link is not already visible.

This short video will show you how to get to the articles you need for your research paper or other University of Minnesota assignments. Never pay for articles! If we don't have it online, request it and we will get it for you. 

Exporting Results From Scopus

Scopus allows you to export results lists (including all search results, ‘My Lists’ and ‘Saved Lists’), documents and documents references. These can be exported either to a file or a reference management tool (e.g. EndNote, Zotero).

• Select the document or documents you would like to export .
• Click the ‘ Export ’ link. A list of file or reference management tools will appear. 
• If this is the first time you are exporting , select your reference management tool or file type.
• Once you choose your file type or reference management tool, an export options box will appear.  Choose what citation information you want to export.  You can also save this template as a preference. Then click Export.
• Your export begins.

Personal account

You can create an Elsevier account for free.   With an Elsevier account you can save a search from any documents results list, or from within your current search history.

• Run a document search or an advanced search . A document search results page opens.
• From your document search results, click ‘ Save search’ which appears to the left of your search results. The "Save this search" popup opens.
• From within the Save this search popup, enter a name for the new Saved search .
• Click ‘ Save ’. Your search is saved and can be accessed by clicking on the Saved Searches link located above the Search History.

If you are not signed into Scopus, you have the option to add selected documents from your results list to a temporary session-based list.   When you sign out of Scopus, the documents in your temporary list are deleted.  If you are signed into Scopus, you have the option to save documents to a list which may be accessed anytime you are signed into Scopus.  You can rename, edit, delete, add documents to, or export your lists of documents in Scopus account. These lists are available any time when you sign in to Scopus and can be modified or exported according to your research needs.

You can setup and manage alerts in Scopus

• From the Set search alert page or Set Alert pop-up, enter a ‘Name of alert’ .
• In ‘ E-mail address’ , enter the email address for alert notifications. This field automatically displays the email address entered when you first registered to use Scopus. You can also enter email addresses of colleagues. Separate multiple email addresses with a semicolon, comma, or space, or press ‘ Enter’ on your keyboard. If a colleague unsubscribes from the alert, you will receive an email informing you of the action.
• From ‘ Frequency’ , select how often you want to receive alert email notices. For weekly alerts you can choose which day of the week you receive the alert, and for monthly alerts you can choose which day you receive the alert. Note: If there are no new documents matching your alert criteria during the time-frame or frequency you choose, you will not receive an alert.
• Click on "set search alert" to save the alert.
• Once you have created your Alert, it can be accessed on the Alert page.  On that page you can select ‘ Active’ or ‘ Inactive’ as the status of your alert. You can change this setting on the Alerts page without losing your frequency preferences. Setting an alert to ‘ Inactive’ status does not delete the alert.

Scopus Tutorials : Scopus tutorials provide a visual tour of Scopus and its functions, but are without sound. The tutorials below are also found in the relevant FAQs in the Scopus Support Center.

Scopus Tutorial: How to conduct a basic search (2022 July 12): 3:10 min

Scopus Tutorial: How to use advanced search (2022 July 13): 3:04 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to Expand Your Search (2022 July 13): 2:32 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to Create Citation Overview (2022 July 22): 2:48 min

Scopus Tutorial: Understand how author profiles work (2022 July 21): 2:14 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to save searches and set alerts (2022 July 13): 2:13 min.

Scopus is useful for learning and research. Beyond serving as simply a citation index, however, it is also useful for assessing scholarly impact. As a result, data from Scopus form the foundation for Manifold , one of the University's research impact tracking systems.

What is Manifold? Manifold is a web-accessible interface that generates profiles and reports of research impact and scholarly output for faculty and departments in the University of Minnesota Medical School. Built in response to emerging expectations and needs around faculty scholarship, Manifold harvests publication data from Scopus, including citation counts, to provide metrics of research impact and productivity for Medical School faculty and departments. In addition, Manifold provides an easy mechanism for identifying nominees for the Wall of Scholarship , which showcases research excellence among Medical School faculty. As more needs around assessment emerge at the University, the system continues to be enhanced to meet new demands on the data that Scopus provides on faculty scholarship.

For more information about Manifold, please consult the Manifold Frequently Asked Questions page.

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• Scopus This link opens in a new window Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database including peer-reviewed titles from international publishers, Open Access journals, conference proceedings, trade publications and quality web sources. Subject coverage includes: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics; Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

​ Note: When Scopus counts citations, it is only counting citations from articles included in the Scopus database. 

Searching in Scopus

On the Library homepage search for "Scopus" in Easy Search. A direct link to Scopus will be at the top of your search results.

When you get into Scopus, enter the information you have about the author or article. In the example we will search for "Quantum Measurement Problem" and change the drop down box to say "Article Title." Then click on "Add Search Field" to add another search box. In that one we will put the author's last name and first initial (Legget, A) and search by Author.

Check the results to be sure it has given you the correct article. Look to the right of the record for the number of times the article has been cited. Click on that number to see the list of articles that have cited it.

Step 4: The final result is a list of articles that have cited the article.

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The Library offers workshops and appointments to introduce members of the Brandeis community to Scopus:

• Request a workshop  for a group of three or more
• Schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian one-on-one or as a pair

To start, search for the paper in Scopus (article title is usually the fastest way).

Scroll down to the References section to view the references.

You'll see options to print , email , or save the references. You can also export them to a citation manager (such as Zotero or EndNote).

Advanced tip : Click on "View in search results format" to analyze the references by publication title, author name, year, country, and number of citations.  

Look for a box on the right side of the page that says "Cited by [x] documents." 

Click on "View all [x] citing documents" to see all of the documents in Scopus that cite this paper.

To start, search for documents by topic, author, or affiliation in Scopus.

Use the checkboxes next to the search results to select the documents you're interested in. (Don't see checkboxes? Click on "View in search results format" ).

To view papers that cite the ones you've selected, click on "View Cited by" in the top menu.

To view the references cited by the papers you've selected, click on the three dots to see more menu options. Click on " View References"  to see the references cited by the documents you selected.  

Advanced tip: Want to see the references for a specific set of papers? 

Search for the papers in Scopus. Select each paper and click on "Add to List" in the menu.

When you've added all of the papers to the list, click on "Lists" in the very top menu (next to "Register" and "Login").

Select all of the documents in the list and click on "View Cited by" or "View References."

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Academic Referencing: How to Cite a Research Paper

Learning how to conduct accurate, discipline-specific academic research can feel daunting at first. But, with a solid understanding of the reasoning behind why we use academic citations coupled with knowledge of the basics, you’ll learn how to cite sources with accuracy and confidence.

When it comes to academic research, citing sources correctly is arguably as important as the research itself. "Your instructors are expecting your work to adhere to these professional standards," said Amanda Girard , research support manager of Shapiro Library at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).

With Shapiro Library for the past three years, Girard manages the library’s research support services, which includes SNHU’s 24/7 library chat and email support. She holds an undergraduate degree in professional writing and a graduate degree in library and information science. She said that accurate citations show that you have done your research on a topic and are knowledgeable about current ideas from those actively working in the field.

In other words, when you cite sources according to the academic style of your discipline, you’re giving credit where credit is due.

Why Cite Sources?

Citing sources properly ensures you’re following high academic and professional standards for integrity and ethics.

“When you cite a source, you can ethically use others’ research. If you are not adequately citing the information you claim in your work, it would be considered plagiarism ,” said Shannon Geary '16 , peer tutor at SNHU.

Geary has an undergraduate degree in communication  from SNHU and has served on the academic support team for close to 2 years. Her job includes helping students learn how to conduct research  and write academically.

“In academic writing, it is crucial to state where you are receiving your information from,” she said. “Citing your sources ensures that you are following academic integrity standards.”

According to Geary and Girard, several key reasons for citing sources are:

• Access. Citing sources points readers to original sources. If anyone wants to read more on your topic, they can use your citations as a roadmap to access the original sources.
• Attribution. Crediting the original authors, researchers and experts  shows that you’re knowledgeable about current ideas from those actively working in the field and adhering to high ethical standards, said Girard.
• Clarity. “By citing your sources correctly, your reader can follow along with your research,” Girard said.
• Consistency. Adhering to a citation style provides a framework for presenting ideas within similar academic fields. “Consistent formatting makes accessing, understanding and evaluating an author's findings easier for others in related fields of study,” Geary said.
• Credibility. Proper citation not only builds a writer's authority but also ensures the reliability of the work, according to Geary.

Ultimately, citing sources is a formalized way for you to share ideas as part of a bigger conversation among others in your field. It’s a way to build off of and reference one another’s ideas, Girard said.

How Do You Cite an Academic Research Paper?

Any time you use an original quote or paraphrase someone else’s ideas, you need to cite that material, according to Geary.

“The only time we do not need to cite is when presenting an original thought or general knowledge,” she said.

While the specific format for citing sources can vary based on the style used, several key elements are always included, according to Girard. Those are:

• Title of source
• Type of source, such as a journal, book, website or periodical

By giving credit to the authors, researchers and experts you cite, you’re building credibility. You’re showing that your argument is built on solid research.

“Proper citation not only builds a writer's authority but also ensures the reliability of the work,” Geary said. “Properly formatted citations are a roadmap for instructors and other readers to verify the information we present in our work.”

Common Citation Styles in Academic Research

Certain disciplines adhere to specific citation standards because different disciplines prioritize certain information and research styles . The most common citation styles used in academic research, according to Geary, are:

• American Psychological Association, known as APA . This style is standard in the social sciences such as psychology, education and communication. “In these fields, research happens rapidly, which makes it exceptionally important to use current research,” Geary said.
• Modern Language Association, known as MLA . This style is typically used in literature and humanities because of the emphasis on literature analysis. “When citing in MLA, there is an emphasis on the author and page number, allowing the audience to locate the original text that is being analyzed easily,” Geary said.
• Chicago Manual of Style, known as Chicago . This style is typically used in history, business and sometimes humanities. “(Chicago) offers flexibility because of the use of footnotes, which can be seen as less distracting than an in-text citation,” Geary said.

The benefit of using the same format as other researchers within a discipline is that the framework of presenting ideas allows you to “speak the same language,” according to Girard.

APA Citation for College: A Brief Overview

Are you writing a paper that needs to use APA citation, but don’t know what that means? No worries. You’ve come to the right place.

How to Use MLA Formatting: A Brief Overview

Are you writing a paper for which you need to know how to use MLA formatting, but don’t know what that means? No worries. You’ve come to the right place.

How to Ensure Proper Citations

Keeping track of your research as you go is one of the best ways to ensure you’re citing appropriately and correctly based on the style that your academic discipline uses.

“Through careful citation, authors ensure their audience can distinguish between borrowed material and original thoughts, safeguarding their academic reputation and following academic honesty policies,” Geary said.

Some tips that she and Girard shared to ensure you’re citing sources correctly include:

• Keep track of sources as you work. Writers should keep track of their sources every time an idea is not theirs, according to Geary. “You don’t want to find the perfect research study and misplace its source information, meaning you’d have to omit it from your paper,” she said.
• Practice. Even experienced writers need to check their citations before submitting their work. “Citing requires us to pay close attention to detail, so always start your citation process early and go slow to ensure you don’t make mistakes,” said Geary. In time, citing sources properly becomes faster and easier.
• Use an Online Tool . Geary recommends the Shapiro Library citation guide . You can find sample papers, examples of how to cite in the different academic styles and up-to-date citation requirements, along with information and examples for APA, MLA and Chicago style citations.
• Work with a Tutor. A tutor can offer support along with tips to help you learn the process of academic research. Students at SNHU can connect with free peer tutoring through the Academic Support tab in their online courses, though many colleges and universities offer peer tutoring.

Find Your Program

How to cite a reference in academic writing.

A citation consists of two pieces: an in-text citation that is typically short and a longer list of references or works cited (depending on the style used) at the end of the paper.

“In-text citations immediately acknowledge the use of external source information and its exact location,” Geary said. While each style uses a slightly different format for in-text citations that reference the research, you may expect to need the page number, author’s name and possibly date of publication in parentheses at the end of a sentence or passage, according to Geary.

A longer entry listing the complete details of the resource you referenced should also be included on the references or works cited page at the end of the paper. The full citation is provided with complete details of the source, such as author, title, publication date and more, Geary said.

The two-part aspect of citations is because of readability. “You can imagine how putting the full citation would break up the flow of a paper,” Girard said. “So, a shortened version is used (in the text).”

“For example, if an in-text citation reads (Jones, 2024), the reader immediately knows that the ideas presented are coming from Jones’s work, and they can explore the comprehensive citation on the final page,” she said.

The in-text citation and full citation together provide a transparent trail of the author's process of engaging with research.

“Their combined use also facilitates further research by following a standardized style (APA, MLA, Chicago), guaranteeing that other scholars can easily connect and build upon their work in the future,” Geary said.

Developing and demonstrating your research skills, enhancing your work’s credibility and engaging ethically with the intellectual contributions of others are at the core of the citation process no matter which style you use.

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A former higher education administrator, Dr. Marie Morganelli is a career educator and writer. She has taught and tutored composition, literature, and writing at all levels from middle school through graduate school. With two graduate degrees in English language and literature, her focus — whether teaching or writing — is in helping to raise the voices of others through the power of storytelling. Connect with her on LinkedIn .

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Titles indexed in Scopus: Check before you publish

An updated version of this post is now available, with new lists and information to verify what is indexed in scopus. click this link to read the updated post..

Publication malpractice is an unfortunate occurrence in the world of scholarly literature. It happens in all subject areas and in all jurisdictions and few journals or books are immune. Here at Scopus , we have recently received notification of journals that purport to be indexed by Scopus but really are not. These journals have even gone as far as to forge letters from the Head of Scopus Content (signature and all)! And just because a journal may have a Scopus logo on their web site, this does not mean they’re indexed in Scopus.

As an author, if you would like to know if your published article will be included in Scopus, we urge you to take note of the following before submitting your work to a journal or conference.

Check the title list. Browse sources on Scopus.com  to check the title list, and evaluate the journal with CiteScore and other journal metrics freely available.

Search in Scopus . Use a Scopus search for the name of the journal or conference and check if any current content is available to see if the title is indeed indexed.

Ask! When in doubt, send an email to the Scopus Helpdesk and one of our Customer Service representatives can let you know if that title is indexed (or is going to be indexed).

Recently, we have received questions about the Scopus coverage of the following titles. NONE of these titles are currently covered by Scopus. These titles have either never been included in Scopus OR have recently been discontinued in Scopus.

British Journal of Education and Science (ISSN 0309-1114) - never in Scopus

Academic Journal of Cancer Research (ISSN 1995-8943 / 2221-3422) - discontinued   

Advances in Environmental Biology (ISSN 1995-0756 / 1998-1066) - discontinued 

Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences (ISSN 1995-0772 /1998-1090) - discontinued 

American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture (ISSN 1995-0748 / 1998-1074) - discontinued 

Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences (ISSN 1991-8178 / 309-8414) - discontinued 

Global Journal of Pharmacology (ISSN 1992-0075 / 2221-3449) - discontinued           

Global Veterinaria (ISSN 1992-6197 / 1999-8163) - discontinued            

Journal of Applied Sciences Research (ISSN 1816-157X / 1819-544X) - discontinued 

Life Science Journal (ISSN: 1097-8135 /2372-613X) - discontinued

Middle East Journal of Scientific Research (ISSN 1990-9233 / 1999-8147) - discontinued        

World Applied Sciences Journal (ISSN 1818-4952 / 1991-6426) - discontinued           

World Journal of Medical Sciences (ISSN 1817-3055 / 1990-4061) - discontinued             

The prevention of publication malpractice is the responsibility of every author, editor, reviewer, publisher and institution. It is also the responsibility of solution providers like Scopus. We hope that you will follow the above steps and also take the time to alert us about any fraud you may come across. For more information on publication ethics, please visit Elsevier’s information site on publication ethics .

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Speaker 1: There's no doubt that the controversial site Sci-Hub has become an integral part of research and finding research papers. So this is how you use it. The first thing you need is a research paper. So you don't start using Sci-Hub until you reach a bottleneck with what you can get open access. So for example, you would typically head over to something like Google Scholar, and you could go in here and sort of search for whatever your research field is. I've just put organic photovoltaics, and then you end up with this list. And you can see that typically in whatever search engine you're using, you've got HTML, you've got PDF, PDF. This tells you that, you know, the majority of the paper, if not all of the paper, is available to you. So you don't need to use it on something like this. But as you're scrolling through, you'll probably see some options here that don't have any PDF or HTML down the side. Bah, bah, can access it, or can you? That's where Sci-Hub comes into things. So if I want to look here at this paper, I'll click into it, and I can see it's by Wiley. It's Advanced Materials, which is a good paper. And I want to look at the organic photovoltaics over three decades. So I'm reading it, I'm reading it, and then, oh, where's the paper? Maybe I can get the full text. Oh no, what? I have to spend money to access papers? Well, maybe you could use something else. Something that you're not actually meant to use, but everyone does. So definitely don't do this, because it is very naughty, and you'll get a very hard slap on the wrist. I'll come to your house, myself, and slap you on the wrist if you do what I'm about to show you. So what you'll notice is we reach this situation where we've reached the end of the line, unless we're willing to spend money or we have access through our institution. Now, one thing I like to do is take the DOI. There's always a DOI. Even before we get to this page, I'll go back one, there's this DOI. And so that's interesting to me, and also I want to know the title of the paper. So those are the two bits of information that are important to take over to SciHub. Now, if I'm going to SciHub, I always access it by just going to Google and typing in SciHub. I go to SciHub, and then it's this top one that I always go for. You're looking for scihub.se or whatever mirror is working at the time. Because you see, this website is so hated that big publishers, with their billions of dollars of profit, try to take it down all the time. And the layout changes quite a lot. So don't be afraid of the site if it looks dissimilar to how it looked last time. Don't worry. But ultimately, you always end up with this. It's a SciHub, and then you've got Enter Your Reference. And in there, you can put things like the DOI and the title. So we'll try both to see if it works. Let's go over here. I'm interested in, where did it go? This one over here, and I'm going to look at this DOI. So I'm going to copy the link address, bonk, and I'm going to take it over to SciHub, and I'm going to put it in, bonk, and I'm just going to click Open. Open. It's as easy as that. And now we let the servers find that paper for me. And here it is. I didn't have to spend all that money. How much did they bloody want for it? $15 for 48 hours access. Not on my watch, thank you very much. I've got it for free. Now, you shouldn't be doing this. They hate this so much, and I'm not sure what the legalities are of it. But look, so many people are using it. 125,624 people in the last hour. Those criminals stealing from those big publishers. So this is what you definitely shouldn't do because you're stealing money directly from the pockets of the CEOs of those companies. How dare you? SciHub was actually founded by this absolute hero of the scientific world, in my opinion, which is Alexandra Elbakyan. And this person is behind this website. There she is waving. Sometimes she ends up just waving for hours and hours because I love looking at her and her like, sort of like, well, what are you going to do to stop me kind of face? Because this has been going on for so many years and they can take her down. I'm just so, so sort of amazed that it continues to exist. You can find out more about Alexandra. Here's a biography. And I'm just amazed that she's been able to keep this going. And I think that this part, you know, the communism, the current system producing knowledge is a classical example of failed capitalist system. So this is all about making sure that intellectual property and knowledge belongs to people and not just people with money. So I think this is such an awesome tool that you definitely shouldn't ever use. Look, she's got photos. Look at these cool photos. I haven't seen these before. What a champion. All right, that's it, I'm done, I'm done. But you can use other options, which we'll talk about in this video. But those are the steps that you can use to actually find research articles for free. There are a few other ones that you need to know about. This is them. Another tool you should consider using is this. Anna'sArchive.org And it's got this bit, SciDB, the Sci Database. Because it says here Sci-Hub has paused uploading of new papers. So if we go back to Sci-Hub, you can see that we've got access to 88 million papers or more than that. But with Anna's Archive, we've got 97 million papers. So that is a thing where Anna's Archive is now sort of like further ahead. So if it's a newer paper, I would consider going over to Anna's Archive to see if you can find it there first, rather than Sci-Hub. We've also got this one, and by the way, this is how you use it, you just put the DOI here. So here we are, we put the DOI in, we click open, and we end up with a similar sort of layout as Sci-Hub, and you get the PDF here. As with the other one, you can go up here and download it or print it out. So these buttons here, and then yeah, this is the information you can get it. So that's really good. We've also got Sci-Hub and doi.org, other sort of places you could potentially find this paper. And then we've got these other options as well. We've got the directory of open access journals. Now this is only useful if your paper you're searching for is in open access. You should be able to find it anyway, without having to use Sci-Hub and that sort of stuff. Archive is a place I love to go. This is quite often really up-to-date, really sort of like leading-edge research that hasn't quite yet been fully peer-reviewed, but it's in the process of being peer-reviewed. You can read people's comments, it's really great. You'll be surprised what's there. And the last thing is unpaywall.com gives you open access to over 50 million free scholarly articles. They harvest open access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories and make it easy to find, track and use. So you go and you get the extension, you click here and then you add it in. You end up with this little kind of like lock. If you go to a page where there's like a paper that you may want to download, if it's available for you, you get this little icon here. And then it says, unfortunately unpaywall couldn't find any legal open access version of this article. And it's that legal aspect that really sort of like Sci-Hub gets around. So definitely don't use it because it's illegal, but if you do use it, that's how you use it. Perfect. If you like this video, go check out this one where I talk about my up-to-date techniques for using Google Scholar. I think you'll love it. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

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Research: How to Build Consensus Around a New Idea

• Devon Proudfoot
• Wayne Johnson

Strategies for overcoming the disagreements that can stymie innovation.

Previous research has found that new ideas are seen as risky and are often rejected. New research suggests that this rejection can be due to people’s lack of shared criteria or reference points when evaluating a potential innovation’s value. In a new paper, the authors find that the more novel the idea, the more people differ on their perception of its value. They also found that disagreement itself can make people view ideas as risky and make them less likely to support them, regardless of how novel the idea is. To help teams get on the same page when it comes to new ideas, they suggest gathering information about evaluator’s reference points and developing criteria that can lead to more focused discussions.

Picture yourself in a meeting where a new idea has just been pitched, representing a major departure from your company’s standard practices. The presenter is confident about moving forward, but their voice is quickly overtaken by a cacophony of opinions from firm opposition to enthusiastic support. How can you make sense of the noise? What weight do you give each of these opinions? And what does this disagreement say about the idea?

• DP Devon Proudfoot is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell’s ILR School. She studies topics related to diversity and creativity at work.
• Wayne Johnson is a researcher at the Utah Eccles School of Business. He focuses on evaluations and decisions about new information, including persuasion regarding creative ideas and belief change.

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In-Text Citations

In scholarly writing, it is essential to acknowledge how others contributed to your work. By following the principles of proper citation, writers ensure that readers understand their contribution in the context of the existing literature—how they are building on, critically examining, or otherwise engaging the work that has come before.

APA Style provides guidelines to help writers determine the appropriate level of citation and how to avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism.

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