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With over 69 million items indexed on Scopus, how can you find and organize relevant research and keep updated on new material, so you have more time for other activities? In this tip & trick, learn about some key Scopus features that can help.

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Getting to the right results

Whether you jump right in and start with a broad search on Scopus, or you prefer a more targeted and specific search approach, some key search tips can help save you time and lead you to more relevant results. Here are a few to start you off:

Use double quotations to search phrases. For example, if in the search box you typed: solar energy without quotations, Scopus returns over 168,400 document results. However, if you include the double quotations: “solar energy,” Scopus will look for items where “solar energy” is used as a phrase, reducing your results to just over 80,700 documents.

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Analyze and filter your

When a journal is first suggested for Scopus, it must undergo a rigorous evaluation and selection process to ensure it meets all the high-quality title selection criteria required for acceptance. However, journals must also demonstrate the ability to maintain their quality status year over year. This is where the Re-evaluation program comes in to play. Now in its second full year, this year’s annual title evaluation has been completed and journals that must undergo the full Re-evaluation process have been notified.  

The Re-evaluation process involves a multi-step and evaluation process used to determine whether or not it still meets all the quality criteria required to remain indexed by Scopus. You can read more details about how title Re-evaluation works in this earlier post.

The path for those titles discontinued as of January 1, 2017 began in 2015 during the annual title evaluation process — a process that all 22,000+ titles indexed by Scopus undergo.

Over the past six months, a number of significant improvements to CiteScore^TM metrics have been made based on your feedback. Here's a quick summary of those improvements – from the initial launch (December 2016) to today's release of the new CiteScore 2016 values:

• Transparency – The most notable improvement is the increased transparency of the metrics, enabling you, whether or not you have access to Scopus, to validate any CiteScore value by clicking into the numerator (citations) and denominator (documents).
• Corrections to journal subject area classifications – through publisher feedback we have updated the classifications given to over 150 titles to better reflect their areas of research.
• Seamless CiteScore calculations for title changes – when a title changes its name, the new title will receive a CiteScore when the next annual values are published, using documents (where applicable) from both the old and new title names.

For metrics to be understood and trusted, clarity into how they work and are calculated is important. When CiteScore was first introduced, we shared the methodology behind the calculation. Now we are taking transparency a step further by enabling anyone to validate any CiteScore value by clicking into the numerator (citations) and denominator (documents) for free.

What this means for you.

When viewing the Source details page for a title on Scopus, you can see the data behind the CiteScore calculation by clicking on either the citation or document count. This opens a window where you can toggle between the list of documents and citations. In addition, if you’re institution subscribes to Scopus and you are logged in, you can even export the information into a CSV file.

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Try it now. Go to JournalMetrics.Scopus.com to get started.

Follow an Example:

Let’s look at the title Mathematical Programming Computation, published by

While a metric like CiteScore provides a consistent way to track performance annually, CiteScore Tracker also shows how the current year’s CiteScore builds up each month — additional information that may be helpful when making decisions.

How it works: CiteScore Tracker is calculated in the same way as CiteScore, but for the current year, rather than previous, complete years. The numerator (citation count) of the current year’s metric builds up every month as additional citations are received, so that the construction is consistent with the construction of the complete year CiteScore. Once the new annual CiteScore value is fixed, then the CiteScore Tracker for the next year begins and is displayed on Scopus.com. For examples, once CiteScore 2016 is fixed the CiteScore Tracker 2017 will also be initiated and available on Scopus.

Where to find it:

1. Go to the Journal Metrics page: https://journalmetrics.scopus.com/

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2. Find the