Bibliometrics & Responsible Research Evaluation: Scopus (Elsevier)
What is Scopus
Scopus is an abstract and citation database that allows researchers and institutions to track and count citations. Scopus combines a detailed abstract and citation database with data and links to scholarly content and tracks the use of citations in published research. It can be used to discover relevant research, identify experts and to access data, metrics and analytical tools.
Searching in Scopus
Within Scopus you can search by Documents, Authors or Affiliations. Documents encompass journal articles, book chapters, articles in press and data papers, conference proceedings. When carrying out a search by author you can search by first and/or last name, additionally you can search by ORCID iD.
Cited Reference Search
you can also search lists of cited references in articles, books, etc. This is a useful tool if the reference you are starting with is highly relevant to your research. This compiles lists of other related source material that are linked to your original cited reference, which my also be of relevance to your research. Cited reference searching can be a helpful addition to your standard keyword search.
Personalisation of Scopus
You can set up an account and register as an individual user in Scopus in order to save searches for topics or authors. Additionally you can set up alerts to be notified about new citations to an article of your own or otherwise. This can be useful to ensure your work that is published is being linked to the correct author profile.
By creating a Scopus account you can customise the following to get more out of the Scopus database:
- Set up alerts
- Monitor author profiles
- Access your dashboard
Within the dashboard section you can:
- See author correction requests
- Access Scopus support
- Set and manage alerts
Metrics in Scopus
Throughout Scopus metrics are ingrained within the journal, article and author profiles, in order to aid the evaluation of authors, journals and articles. These metrics can also show detailed accounts of research areas to help provide insights as to what is currently happening in a given subject area. You can compare up to 10 sources at a time and examine the results in table or a chart format.
Article-level metrics (ALMs) include:
- Citation overviews
- Create graphs
- Link to citing documents
- Compare citation counts.
Journal-level metrics include:
- CiteScore metrics
- Source normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP)
- SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
Author metrics include:
- Citation overview tracker
- Analyse author output
- h-index
- h-graph
Scopus Author Profiles
Scopus author profiles provide researchers with data that they can use to:
- display research output
- Showcase impact and collaborations
- Update personal and organisational websites, CV’s and institutional profiles.
- Identify future potential of researchers to employers and funding agencies.
Some of the above can be used to evaluate your work in part, to Inform promotion and hiring decisions and to aid in the selection process for awarding grants to individual researchers or teams of researchers.
It is important to review your author profile semi-regularly to ensure it is up to date with current publications, and citations.