Product Overview of Scopus
Introduction
Scopus is a comprehensive scientific abstract and citation database launched by Elsevier in 2004, positioning itself as a competitor to the Web of Science. It is designed to facilitate the discovery, evaluation, and analysis of research across various disciplines.
Coverage and Content
Scopus is a multidisciplinary database that covers peer-reviewed journals, books, conference proceedings, and patents spanning the fields of life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences, health sciences, and more. It boasts an extensive collection of over 82 million records, including 41,462 indexed titles, and provides 100% coverage of key databases such as MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Compendex.
Key Features and Functionality
Search and Analysis Capabilities
- Advanced Search: Users can conduct searches using field codes, proximity operators, or Boolean operators to narrow down the scope of their queries. Searches can be tailored to specific fields such as title, abstract, and keywords.
- Analyze Search Results: Scopus allows users to analyze their search results, breaking them down by year, source, author, affiliation, country, document type, and subject area. This feature helps in identifying trends and patterns in the literature.
Citation and Impact Metrics
- CiteScore: A metric that reflects the number of citations received by a journal’s articles published over the last three years, relative to the number of articles published in that period. It is not field-normalized, so it is best used within the same discipline.
- SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper): This metric normalizes the citation count by the citation potential of the subject field, allowing for comparisons across different disciplines.
- SJR (SCImago Journal Rank): This metric reflects a journal’s prestige by considering both the number of citations it receives and the importance of the journals that cite it.
- h-Index: A metric based on the number of papers an author has published and the number of citations those papers have received.
Author and Affiliation Analysis
- Author Metrics: Users can view an author’s output in terms of publications, h-index, citations, and co-authors. This feature helps in evaluating an author’s research impact and collaborations.
- Affiliation Search: Users can explore affiliated authors, collaborating affiliations, and the total number of published documents by an institution, broken down by subject area or source.
AI-Driven Features
- Scopus AI: This feature identifies seminal papers, leading experts, and emerging themes relevant to the user’s query. It also provides concept maps and summaries to facilitate freeform exploration of the literature.
Alerts and Notifications
- Search Alerts: Users can create saved searches that run at specified intervals, receiving email notifications with new results. This feature helps researchers stay updated with the latest publications in their area of interest.
Bibliographic Management and Export
- Citation Export: Citations can be exported into various reference managers such as Mendeley, RefWorks, and EndNote, streamlining the process of managing bibliographies.
Additional Capabilities
- Patent Searches: Scopus includes limited functionality for patent searches through a dedicated patent database, although this is not as comprehensive as its journal and article coverage.
- Visualization Tools: Users can graph results and compare sources to visualize data and trends in their research area.
In summary, Scopus is a powerful tool for researchers, offering extensive coverage of peer-reviewed literature, advanced search and analysis capabilities, robust citation and impact metrics, and AI-driven features to enhance the research process. Its subscription-based model ensures continuous updates and improvements, making it a valuable resource for academic and scientific communities.