Using Scopus What is Scopus and what can I use it for? Logging into Scopus Finding journal articles and other literature Finding and comparing key journals in your subject area Understanding Scopus impact factors Finding publications by a specific author Finding publications from a specific institution Setting up a personal account with Scopus How do I get help with using Scopus? 2017/2018 Version 1 1 What is Scopus and what can I use it for? Scopus is a multi-disciplinary database containing bibliographic records for peer-reviewed literature including journal articles, conference proceedings and some books. Abstracts are available for many papers, and reference lists are available for all papers published 1996-present. Full text is linked where Leeds Trinity University has access via subscription. Scopus can be used for: Literature searching Identifying and comparing key journals in your subject area (e.g. deciding where to submit a paper for publication) Finding publications and citation data for a specific author Getting an overview of research output at a specific institution Setting up a personal account (to save searches, get alerts etc) How do I log into Scopus? On the library website, click on Databases A-Z underneath the Journals search box. Select SCOPUS from the A-Z list. A description will appear in the centre of the screen. Click on the link Go to this database to enter Scopus. Finding journal articles and other literature You can use the Document Search feature in Scopus to search for articles on a specific topic. Document Search is the default setting in Scopus, so it should already be selected when you first enter the database. 2017/2018 Version 1 2 Type your keywords into the search box to find articles on your topic. From the results page, you have various options for sorting and restricting your results. Results are sorted by date (most recent first). You can also sort by Relevance, Cited By (most cited by other papers), or other factors. Sorting your results Use the LinkSource Use the options in the left-hand menu to restrict your results by date, author etc. Then link to find the full text choose Limit To or Exclude. of an article. Click on an article title to see the abstract and reference list, if available. From this page you can also see which other papers have cited your chosen article, and other papers which have references in common with your chosen article. 2017/2018 Version 1 3 Cited By See which other papers (if any) have cited your selected article. Related Documents See other papers with similar references. A box titled Metrics appears at the top right of the screen when viewing a specific article. Click on View all metrics to see more detailed information. Metrics in Scopus includes both academic citations, and also altmetrics - the number of times that a piece of research is mentioned on social media, e.g. Twitter and Facebook mentions and blog posts. PlumX metrics include additional stats, such as the number of times an article has been downloaded. Finding and comparing key journals in your subject area You can use Scopus to identify the key journals which have published the most papers in your subject area. There is also an option to compare journals by various different measures. 2017/2018 Version 1 4 From the search results screen, you can find information about the journals which published the articles in your results list. Click on Analyze Search Results to find information about key journals within your search results. On the next screen, select the Source tab to view information on journals. Select the Source tab You should now see a list of journals in the left hand column. These are the journals which published the articles from your results list. They are ranked numerically with the journal that published the most articles at the top. The graph on the right shows the number of articles published in the selected journals over time. This can help you to identify trends in research and publication. You can also compare journals by various different impact factors (more on this over the page). To do this, use the tickboxes next to the journal titles in the left-hand column to select the journals you want to compare. 2017/2018 Version 1 5 Now click on Compare sources and view CiteScore, SJR and SNIP data. On the next screen, you will see a new graph with the option to compare your selected journals by various different measures. You can use the tabs along the top of the graph to compare the journals by different factors. You can find out more about what each of the tabs mean by hovering over them with the cursor. Impact factors (the first four tabs) are explained in more detail below. About Scopus impact factors Impact factors are a way of measuring the academic influence of a journal. Impact factors measure the number of times that articles published in a specific journal are cited in other publications. For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 5, it means that articles published in that journal receive an average number of 5 citations each. 2017/2018 Version 1 6 There are various ways to measure impact factors. Scopus uses four different measurements to assess the impact of a journal. CiteScore: example: to calculate a journal’s CiteScore for 2015, you would count the citations accrued in 2015 for articles published in the journal during 2012, 2013 or 2014. This number is divided by the number of documents indexed on Scopus published from 2012-2014. SciMago journal rank (SJR): the SJR gives citations a different value depending on the prestige of the citing journal. SJR also takes into account differences between citation patterns in different subject fields. Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): the SNIP takes into account citation behavior in different subject fields, enabling meaningful comparison between journals in different fields. Citations: this is simply the total number of citations accrued by articles in the journal during a given year. For more detailed information on Scopus impact factors, see https://journalmetrics.scopus.com/ Finding publications by a specific author To find articles by a specific author, use the Author Search function in Scopus, available as a tab on the main homepage. You can search by name, affiliation (the institution where the author works), or by ORCID ID number. 2017/2018 Version 1 7 About ORCID An ORCID ID is a unique identifying number for an author, which can be used to group all of their publications together. To find out more about ORCID IDs, including registering for your own, see https://orcid.org/ When searching for an author in Scopus, you may need to select the correct person from a list of similar names. Click on an author’s name to view their profile and a list of their publications. Click on See below Analyze for more Author information Output to see about the H- a detailed index. overview of the author’s publications. About the H-index The H-index (highlighted in the author profile above) is a way of measuring the impact of an author’s research by the number of times their articles have been cited. If an author has a H-index of 8, it means that 8 of their publications have been cited at least 8 times. The H-index in Scopus only includes data for publications within Scopus; this may not include all of an author’s research output. As with journal impact factors, it is important to bear in mind that the H-index is only one way of measuring the impact of an author’s research. 2017/2018 Version 1 8 Click on Analyze Author Output in the author profile to see a detailed overview of their publications. Use the tabs along the top to view the author’s publications in different ways, e.g. journals published in, citations, co- authors etc. Finding publications from a specific institution To get an overview of the research published by a specific institution, select the Affiliations tab on the main Scopus homepage. You may need to select the correct institution from a list. Click on the numbers to see a list of articles, authors etc. The pie chart shows a breakdown of research by subject area. 2017/2018 Version 1 9 Setting up a personal account with Scopus If you have a personal account with Scopus you can: Save your searches Create lists of selected articles Set up email alerts (e.g. when an article is cited, or when an author publishes a new paper) Manage your author profile (if you have published articles which appear in Scopus) To set up a personal account, click on Register in the top right-hand corner of the Scopus screen. Fill in your details to set up an account with Scopus. How do I get help with using Scopus? Click on Help on the top menu bar within Scopus to access online help. Alternatively, contact your Liaison Librarian – see the Contact page on the library website for more information. 2017/2018 Version 1 10 .