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Scopus and Ei (Content Excerpted from Elsevier)

Start with Document Search

You can enter your search phrases in this search box and select the field (e.g., title, author, keywords) in the drop-down menu on the right. You can check Scopus' Official Search Tips for more information or this link for a quick reference guide. You may also search for a specific article, articles of an author or an affiliation (e.g., The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen) by clicking on the documents, authors, affiliations button above. 

This tutorial demonstrates how to create and run a search using the Scopus Document search form.Video Link

Working with Results

You can use Refine Results button to limit your results to a certain category, such as year, author name, subject area, etc. 

Click the number in the parentheses to preview the corresponding results. e.g., see the 237 publictions of convex optimization by Stephen, Boyd. 

The Limit to button refines the results to the items you selected; the Exclude button removes the items you selected from the results.   

In the results page, you can use View references button from the drop-down menu and View cited by button to see documents which have cited a document the search results. 

Please check this Official Guide on working with search results

###This video demonstrates the features and functions on the Search Results page. Video Tutorials 

###This tutorial demonstrates the features available on a Scopus Document details page. Video tutorial 2

###This tutorial demonstrates metrics of a document's citation impact. Video tutorial 3

Search History

You can see previous searches ran during your current session in the Search history table.

  • You can view the results list of a specific search by clicking the number of results.
  • You can set up an alert or an RSS feed for a search.
  • You can save a search for use or reference in another session.
  • You can edit and re-run a previous search.
  • You can also combine searches and re-run them as a single search.

Other Search Methods

The author search helps you find and track documents written by a specific person in Scopus, as well as  number of times each article has been cited by year, even if the author is listed differently. You can use the Author Evaluator to examine various aspects of the author's "Documents" including: sources (where published), document types, years of publication, subject areas and co-authors. The "Citations" tab offers a graph of the total number of citations by year of an author's published works. This guide tells you more on Working with Author Search results. You may also find some tips on Author Search. #Video Link 

#This video tells you how to search for authors by topic area. 

The Author Detail Page covers the author's research areas of interest, publishing and citation information, name variants, and other pertinent information regarding an author's publication history. This page tells you more on Author Detail Page. #Video Link

Scopus Author Identifier

Some authors have similar names or names can appear differently according to various regional spelling rules. e.g., Cantonese Jyutping vs. Mandarin Pinyin or Chinese scholar with an English name frequently used. The Scopus Author Identifier is a unique number assigned to each author in Scopus. It helps you find authors who have been cited differently. Guide to this topic

ORCID: An ORCID is A 16-digit number and is used by editors, funding agencies, publishers and institutions to identify scholars, like ISBNs for books or DOIs for articles. You may use ORCID to do an Author Search, like in Web of Science. See http://orcid.org for more information on ORCID.

By doing Affiliation Search you can find:

  • documents published by the institution, 
  • authors affiliated with the institution,
  • journals and other sources of the documents,
  • major collaborating affiliations of the institution
  • percentage of publications in each of the covered subject areas

This guide tells you more on Working with affiliation search results. You may also find some Tips on Affiliation Search ##Video

Likewise, the Affiliations details page provides information about affiliations that have more than one document in Scopus. The affiliation details page provides an address, name variants, and the affiliation ID. This page tells you more on Affiliation Detail Page. ##Video

Affiliation ID 

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The Affiliation Identifier distinguishes between affiliations by assigning each institution with publications in Scopus a unique number and grouping together the documents affiliated with that organization. This feature is useful for distinguishing between institutions with similar names, and in combining work from institutions that have been cited differently by authors or across time.

By using Sources button, you can search a journal by title, ISSN or publisher and also limit your search by subject area. 

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You can write search query by using field codes, Boolean Operators and wildcard mentioned above to do Advance Search. 

Boolean Operators:

AND: search results contain all terms connected by AND, e.g., economics AND artificial intelligence

OR: search results contain any term connected by OR, e.g., programming OR coding OR software

AND NOT: search results do not contain term after AND NOT, e.g., mathematics AND NOT  numerical analysis

The priority orders of these three operators are OR>AND>AND NOT. Parentheses are used to group compound Boolean operators and may change this order. e.g., (Pagets OR Paget's) AND (cell* AND tumor*)

Wildecards:

*: zero or more characters, e.g., hyro* for hydrogen, hydrocarbon, hydrochloride

?: one character only, e.g., wom?n for women, woman

W/n: n represents the number of words between two words, e.g., data W/3 security for three random words between data and security. 

Field Codes:

You can search for a term in a specific field by entering the field code in your advanced search. The format looks like: field_code(search term), e.g. AFFIL(University of Pittsburgh). There are over 60 different field codes to search from. Overview of Field Codes

Other Tips:

Use quotation mark ""or braces {} for exact phrase, e.g., "convex optimization"/{convex optimization}

Searches in British and American spelling will be both accepted and returned with both variations

Words in a phrase without quotation marks will be treated as they are connected by an implicit AND. This means the search results will have all these words but they may or may not appear close together. 

Words NOT recommended in Scopus search 

Official Guides to advanced search