Scopus

Summary

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research – and it incorporates into researchers’ workflow seamlessly. Updated daily, Scopus offers:

• Nearly 21,000 titles from 5,000 international publishers, including coverage of
• 20,000 peer-reviewed journals (incl > 2,600 Open Access journals)
• 370 book series
• Extensive conference coverage (5.5 million conference papers)
• 50 million records, of which:
• > 29 million records back to 1996 with references
• > 21 million pre 1996 records go back as far as 1869

Scopus offers the broadest, most integrated coverage available of Scientific, Technical, Medical and Social Sciences including Arts & Humanities literature. Next to its proprietary abstract and citation database, Scopus offers patents from 5 patent offices (US Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office, Japan Patent Office, World Intellectual Property Organization and UK Intellectual Property Office) and multiple selected sources e.g. institutional repositories, digital archives and special subject collections.

Scopus subject coverage spans 27 discipline areas:

• Agricultural and Biological Sciences Arts and Humanities
• Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
• Business, Management and Accounting Chemical Engineering
• Chemistry
• Computer Science
• Decision Sciences Dentistry
• Earth and Planetary Science
• Economics, Econometrics and Finance
• Energy
• Engineering
• Environmental Science
• Health Professions
• Immunology and Microbiology
• Materials Science
• Mathematics
• Medicine
• Multidisciplinary*
• Neuroscience Nursing
• Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
• Physics and Astronomy
• Psychology
• Social Sciences
• Veterinary

*Journals publishing in a wide range of subject areas, such as Nature and Science. An internal editorial team assigns classification codes to all journals that are loaded into Scopus. Scopus coverage for all titles is complete from 1996 onward. Prior to 1996, content depth and completeness is determined by the in-house Elsevier team and uses advice from the external Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB).

Inclusion Policy

The Scopus Title Coverage Policy, set by the Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB), is used to evaluate requests for new title additions in Scopus.

On an ongoing basis, the CSAB evaluates a list of titles compiled from suggestions from various groups, such as users or CSAB members. Suggestions of titles can be submitted using the web form on the Scopus Info Site.

Inclusion of the titles in Scopus is determined by applying the following guidelines:

Scopus aims to be the most complete and comprehensive resource for all research literature in Science, Social Science, Technology and Medicine.

Additional titles are selected annually for inclusion in Scopus by the external, independent CSAB based on its collective professional expertise and background.

Criteria for inclusion in Scopus include, but are not limited to, the following:

A title must have an English-language title and publish English-language abstracts of all research articles. However, full-text articles can be in any language.
Timely publication of issues, with a minimum of one issue per year, is required.
Overall quality must be high.
3.1 Assessment of a journal's quality may include, but is not limited to, the following:
Authority: including the reputation of a commercial or society publisher, the diversity in affiliations of authors or – if there is an editorial board
the international recognition of the leading editors.
3.2 A title must demonstrate some form of quality control (e.g. peer review).

Scopus includes the following document types in its coverage:

• Article
• Book
• Business Article & Press Release
• Conference Report
• Editorial
• Erratum
• Letter
• Note
• Report
• Review
• Short Survey

Scopus covers titles continuously from 1996 onwards, meaning that all records in a journal that comply with the document type policy are included in the database. Exceptions include:

Titles that have been added since 2004 when Scopus was launched. Coverage of these titles begins from the date they were added to Scopus
Publication type that have no ISSN or have irregular publication schedules
Item types, e.g. Trade Publications, where not all articles fit the Document Type policy or items do not carry references
Medline unique journals*, which fall outside Scopus’ control

* 80% of the Medline titles are sourced via Medline as well as a subscription to the source title. The remaining 20% of the Medline titles are fed only from Medline – Medline unique - and therefore Scopus does not control this coverage

Geographical Coverage

World

Scopus has broad global coverage and seeks to represent content sourced from publishers across a wide range of countries. For a detailed breakdown the online titles list can be sorted by country field.

Archive Policy

Rather than source the older coverage for each title individually Scopus is adding large backfile collections from major publishers in subject areas such as Physics, Chemistry and Social Sciences to enrich the existing 19 million pre-1996 records. So far, the following archives are available in Scopus:

• Springer archive (back to 1869)
• Institute of Physics (back to 1874)
• American Physical Society (back to 1893)
• American Institute of Physics (back to 1939)
• Royal Society of Chemistry (back to 1841)
• The journal Nature (back to 1950)
• The journal Science (back to 1880)
• Elsevier archive (back to 1823)

It should be noted that for new individual titles added each year to Scopus via the CSAB recommendations, title coverage will initially be from the volume and issue from the year the title starts being covered by Scopus. However the titles will be incorporated into plans to load backfile material. The priority will be on completeness from 1996 forward in the first instance.

Embargo Rules

No embargo rules apply.

Update Frequency

Daily

Keywords and Indexes

Scopus manually adds index terms for 80% of the titles included in Scopus. These index terms are derived from thesauri that Elsevier owns or licenses and are added in order to improve recall from a search.

A team of professional indexers assigns index terms to records according to the following controlled vocabularies:

• Geobase Subject Index (geology, geography, earth and environmental science)
• EMTREE (life sciences & health science)
• MeSH (life sciences & health science)
• FLX terms, WTA terms (fluid sciences & textile sciences)
• Regional Index (geology, geography, earth and environmental science)
• Species Index (biology, life sciences)
• EI thesaurus (engineering, technology, physical sciences)

There is no limit to the number of index terms that Scopus can add to records. However, in the case of EMTREE and MeSH terms (both terms are added to records where available), only the index terms that have a direct relation with the topic of the article are displayed and made searchable on Scopus.

The reason that other EMTREE and MeSH index terms are not selected for Scopus is that users otherwise retrieve irrelevant results. For example, adverse drug reaction terms are only relevant when users are searching for articles in the context of adverse drug reactions, a feature which is only possible with the support of a thesaurus, which is not available in Scopus. For the same reason, for example EI 'treatment' terms are not included in Scopus.

For EMTREE, the index terms with a direct relation are the ‘Major Focus’ and the mentioned index terms, for MeSH the ‘Major Topics’ and ‘Minor Topic’ index terms. Also, the controlled terms, uncontrolled terms and main headings for the EI thesaurus are displayed and searchable in Scopus. For all other subject indices, all index terms are displayed.

Authority Files / Author Profiling

Scopus uses a new approach far more powerful than an authority file for author names which de facto relies only on the data elements of the author name to match a search query.

Scopus is unique in using complex and sophisticated software algorithms to ensure that articles from the same author - despite spelling variations of the same name and/or other authors sharing the same last name - are accurately grouped. Grouping of articles by the same author is done using all data elements available in the published records such as author name, affiliation(s), co-author(s), citation(s), source title(s), co-citations, etc. Very high levels of accuracy (99.2%+) and completeness (95%+) are realized by this software.

Similar algorithms are used to group articles published in the same journal although the journal name might have been captured differently. Also, authority files are used to capture the journal history and link journals to its successor and/or predecessor in the case of title changes.

Citation Linking

Scopus has captured all references post 1996 and provides matching of references to citations with unprecedented accuracy and precision. Scopus provides links to the "cited by" count next to every article in a search result set, this count is updated daily. Furthermore on the abstract record Scopus not only provides the full citation of the first three most recent citations plus a drop down list of all citations to that article, the references in the article record also each show a cited by count.

Scopus also provides a totally unique feature, the Scopus Citation Tracker, which allows the user to get an instant overview of citations to a particular article set (by author, group of authors, subject area etc) - the overview shows the number of citations each article received each year following publication (1996 onward) - each of these citation counts are linked to a result set showing the full records of each citing article.

Full Text Linking

Scopus provides a wide variety of linking options and flexibility. Scopus offer pre-resolved links to the full text of articles at the publisher's site on the results page, abstract record page and also for quite some references. Most of these links are provided via CrossRef. Scopus also links to articles from more than 800 journals from publishers who are not members of CrossRef, using an in-house database of algorithmic links. A team of linking specialists are dedicated to testing and reviewing these links on a regular basis to ensure they remain current and active.

In addition, library integration options are offered which enable linking to a (local) link resolver, an OPAC, document delivery supplier - the administrator can choose the type of linking s/he wishes to set-up for his or her institute and the underlying conditions.

Institutions that do not use a link resolver can have their entitlements uploaded to Scopus. It is possible to implement conditional linking from Scopus to the library, based on entitlements conditions.

Other Information

For more information about Scopus, please visit the Scopus Info site.

Information about our content coverage policy and content strategy, see the Content Coverage guide.