FAQs: Faq

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Q: What is Scopus?
A: Scopus (www.scopus.com) is the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources, with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Scopus covers more than 15,000 peer-reviewed journals in science, technology, medicine and social sciences from over 4,000 international publishers. It's the easiest way to find relevant results fast. Content coverage is reliable and high quality, and you'll find articles you won't find in other databases. You can quickly refine and sort by subject, by times cited, by title, and by author, to gain new insights that can advance your research. Assess research quality and identify journals for submission by tracking citations, then click to the full-text to see citations in context. Scopus helps you decide what to investigate further. It's so easy to use that you can spend less time mastering databases and more time on research.

Q: How have all these titles been sourced? Is this a multi-publisher initiative?
A: Elsevier has approached the publisher of each journal to request whether we can source and index the abstract and references for each article. In most cases, Elsevier holds a subscription to the journal and publishers are aware that Elsevier is covering their titles. This is an Elsevier, rather than a multi-publisher initiative.

Q: What is the Scopus Citation Tracker?
A: The Scopus Citation Tracker provides a simple way to investigate citations in a number of different ways. This functionality enables users to track data year by year for a specific author or topic.

With the Scopus Citation Tracker, users can evaluate:

• The most highly cited author in a field and check that author's relevance
• The real-time citation data of articles and authors of interest
• What topics are hot in familiar or unfamiliar subject areas
• What subjects are being cited by other subjects

For more information, examples and a demonstration, please visit www.info.scopus.com/ctracker.

Q: What is the Scopus Author Identifier?
A: Many authors have similar names. Scopus Author Identifier functionality distinguishes between these names by assigning each author in Scopus a unique number and grouping together all of the documents written by that author.

This feature is especially useful for distinguishing between author who share very common names like Smith or Wang or Lee.

Additionally, author names in Scopus can be formatted differently. For example, the same author could appear in one document as Lewis, M; in another as Lewis, M.J; and in another as Lewis, Michael. Scopus Author Identifier functionality matches the documents of this author and groups these name variants together, so that authors, even if cited differently, are identified with their specific papers.

This enables you to find and recognize an author, despite variations in name spelling.

For a demonstration, please visit www.info.scopus.com/authoridentifier.

Q: What are Selected Sources in Scopus?
A: Selected Sources is a new feature in Scopus that allows for the display of customized search results from Scirus' institutional resources and special subject collections. This fourth tab will only appear if it is set up by the librarian (via the AdminTool). Please contact the local e-helpdesk (http://www.info.scopus.com/contactus/) for more information.

The Selected Sources results are brought to users via Scirus (www.scirus.com), the science-specific search engine.

Q: Who to contact for more information about Scopus?
A: For more information about Scopus in general or if you are experiencing a problem, please contact our local e-helpdesk (http://www.info.scopus.com/contactus/). They are also able to provide you with more information about a license to Scopus.

Content Coverage

Q: What content does Scopus cover?
A: Scopus covers the broadest available coverage of scientific, technical, medical and social science literature including: 15,000 peer-reviewed jornals from more than 4,000 international publishers, including coverage of: Open Access journals, Conference Proceedings, Trade Publications and Book Series. For an overview download the complete list of titles.
For more facts, please check the Scopusfact sheet.

Q: Which publishers does Scopus cover?
A: Scopus covers the content of over 4,000 international scientific, technical, medical and social science publishers. Download the full list of publishers

Q: What subject areas are covered by Scopus?
A: Scopus covers the following subject areas: Life Sciences, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Physical Sciences. For more details check www.scopus.com.

Q: What is Scopus’ journal coverage policy?
A: Scopus aims to be the most comprehensive scientific, medical, technical and social science point of access containing all relevant literature. We are continuously reviewing additional journals for inclusion in Scopus. We endeavor to include all journals that conform to academic quality norms and specifically require that publications are peer reviewed and published in a timely manner.

To ensure that relevant scientific information is not omitted from the database we make sure to take a truly global view. We cover journals from all geographical regions including non-English titles as long as English abstracts can be provided with the articles. We are also actively looking at electronic-only sources (including open access journals). Whether these are commercial journals or not is irrelevant for Scopus coverage.

A Content Selection and Advisory Board is a group of approximately 20 scientists and researchers and 10 subject librarians from all corners of the globe who each represent every major scientific discipline. They work with the Scopus team to understand how the product is used and how it could be enhanced. Their recommendations directly influence the overall direction of Scopus and the prioritisation of requests for new features. The group also contributes to the content growth strategy to ensure Scopus content stays international, current and relevant. The Board annually reviews new requests for additional content, including document types, subjects and languages. To submit a request for inclusion, please go to www.info.scopus.com/suggesttitle.

Q: What is the Scopus policy on Open Access (OA) journals and alternative publishing activities?
A: Scopus aims to be the most comprehensive Scientific, Medical, Technical and Social Science abstract and citation database containing all relevant literature, irrespective of medium or commercial model. This means that we actively look beyond traditional types of publications, and follow closely any new and alternative publication activities. From the Scopus interface, users have access to a wealth of information on the scientific Web, beyond traditional peer-reviewed publications. Scirus, www.scirus.com, the Web search engine for scientific information, is fully integrated into the Scopus interface. It offers users access to pre-print servers (e.g. Cogprints), Open Archives (e.g. ArXiv.org), patents (Japanese, World and European Patent Office and US and UK Patent and Trademark Office) and institutional repositories such as T-Space from University of Toronto, Canada. For more facts check the Scopus fact sheet.

To suggest additional sources for inclusion in Scopus, please submit a request at www.info.scopus.com/suggesttitle.

Q: Which Medline journals are covered in Scopus?
A: Scopus has a 100% overlap with Medline titles. The majority of those titles are indexed by Elsevier and include references. The remaining approximately 1,250 unique Medline titles are fed directly from Medline into Scopus and do not include references. The Scopus title list the Medline unique titles are marked as ‘Medline’.

Q: How many years of cited references does Scopus cover?
A: Market research indicated that 10 years of references fulfill 86% of actual usage. Scopus abstract records from 1996 onward have references.

Scopus is developed based on market demand, focusing on actual search and browse behavior of end users. The results of our testing did not indicate the need to go back further than 10 years. However, if we receive a strong indication of market demand to include older cited references, we will readdress this policy. Please send feedback to content@scopus.com

Q: Does Scopus offer indexing and is it professional indexing?
A: Yes, which gives Scopus a major advantage over other all-science databases. The large majority (85%) of the records contain professional index terms in addition to author keywords, offering a sophisticated means to locate and retrieve relevant information.

Q: How are records indexed?
A: A team of professional indexers assigns index terms to records according to the following controlled vocabularies (in addition to keywords supplied by authors themselves):

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

Q: What is the geographical distribution of publications in Scopus?
A: To ensure that relevant scientific information is not omitted from the database we make sure to take a truly global view. We cover journals from all geographical regions including non-English titles as long as English abstracts can be provided with the articles. See the graph below for a breakdown of Scopus geographical coverage:

Please submit any new suggestions via www.info.scopus.com/suggesttitle.

Q: How can I suggest additional titles for Scopus?
A: We encourage our customers and users to suggest additional sources to be added to Scopus. The submission procedure is to ensure the request falls within the journal coverage policy (for more information, please see criteria in the Content Guide). Please fill in the submission at www.info.scopus.com/suggesttitle.

Library Integration

Q: What is a link resolver?
A: A link resolver is a system which receives metadata as input (metadata describing a journal article) and calculates links to the journal articles described by the input. A link resolver has a knowledgebase of links and entitlements information per customer. As libraries often have multiple copies of the same article available, it is able to resolve to the appropriate copy of the article as defined by the customer.

Q: What is an OpenURL?
A: An OpenURL is a standard format for sending/transporting metadata. A link resolver is OpenURL-compliant because it can receive and understand OpenURLs.

Q: Does Scopus support Athens authentication?
A: Yes, Scopus has supported Athens authentication and an Athens login can be used to access the personalization features on Scopus and to access RefWorks. The first time this login is used, the user will be asked to complete the Scopus registration form but will not need to enter a new password. For accessing RefWorks, Athens users can indicate whether they want to use their Athens account to access RefWorks or their RefWorks settings.

Q: What is EZProxy?
A: EZProxy is an easy to set-up and easy to maintain program for providing users with remote access to Web-based licensed databases like Scopus. It operates as an intermediary server between users and licensed databases. Users connect to EZProxy, and then it connects on their behalf to licensed databases to obtain web pages and send them back to users.

Since EZProxy runs on a machine on an institution's network, the database vendor sees the requests as coming from an IP address on the institution's network, so it permits access. Users do not have to change any settings on their computer; they just have to logon to their EZProxy server when they want to access electronic resources.

Scopus is compliant with EZProxy.

Q: Can I set up my library’s search portal to target Scopus?
A: Yes, you can – provided that you are using a portal provided by a vendor that has enabled their products for the Scopus XML gateway. To review the list click here.

Q: We are using a portal from a different vendor than those listed. Now what?
A:We are continuously working with additional vendors to enable their products for the Scopus XML gateway, so more vendors will be added in due course. If your portal does not support the Scopus XML gateway yet, it is best to contact your vendor directly and ask them to contact us about developing support for the gateway.

Q: I am a search portal vendor and I want to have my product target Scopus.
A: Good! We welcome new federated search partners. If you want to discuss possibilities, please contact us via the integration contact form. For more information on integration possibilities with Scopus click here.

Q: We are a Scopus customer and have developed our own home-grown federated search portal from scratch. Can we have that portal target the Scopus XML gateway?
A:We are certainly interested in talking with you. Please contact us via the integration contact form.