Searching Scopus

In Scopus you can search by Documents, Authors or Affiliations.

Document Search

Documents include journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, articles in press and data papers. Follow the steps below to learn how to perform a basic document search:

• Enter your search terms into the Search documents box [1]
  • By default, Scopus will search in the Article title, Abstract and Keywords of documents
• You can specify in which fields to search using the drop-down menu [2]. 
• Use the +Add search field [3] option to add additional fields 
• Each new search field is combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT [4]
• To see a complete list of advanced field codes, select Advanced document search [5]
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Author Search

When you search by authors, you can search by last and/or first name.

You also have the option to search by ORCID iD. What's an ORCID iD and why do I need one?

Affiliation Search

An affiliation is an organisation that a researcher is associated with, such as a university or research institute. Researchers may be associated with multiple affiliations, or have moved from one to another during their career. 

When you search by affiliation, just type the affiliation's name, eg. University of Bolton. The search will begin to auto-populate.

Limiting your search

Before you run your search you can set the following date limits.

To apply a date limit, select Publication date range [6], then specify Published from / To [7]. Choose from 'All years' or a range of years by using the drop down arrows (the default is 'All years')

Or you can limit by Date added to Scopus [8]. Specify 'Anytime' or within the last 7, 14 or 30 days by using the drop down arrow (the default is 'Anytime')

Cited Reference Search

Scopus provides the ability to search the list of cited references in articles, books, etc. If the reference which you are starting with is very relevant to your research, other related publications have probably cited references which are also relevant to your research. Cited reference searching is a useful extension to your standard keyword search.

Search Tips in Scopus

To search for a  loose phrase, use double quotation marks:

 “heart attack” will search for documents where heart and attack appear together 

An asterisk functions as a wildcard:

 “criminal* insan*” finds criminally insane and criminal insanity. 

To search for an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces  { }

Note: {heart-attack} and {heart attack} return different results, as the first will search for results that contain a hyphen between heart and attack