Case Study: Scopus supports innovation in diagnostic testing
Did you know that Scopus is used by more than 3,000 academic, government and corporate institutions? We had the chance to interview some of the corporate researchers who work with Scopus on a regular basis and asked them about their experience. This is the story of Chris, a biologist and an experienced research scientist in parasitology and virology.
In his current role as a regional head of R&D, Chris focuses on existing product support as well as ongoing evolution of tests that must detect antibodies and antigens as well as parasitic, bacterial or viral disease in livestock animals.
The breadth and functionality of Scopus searching allows Chris and his team to build on their initial search and follow references until they have a complete picture of the topic at hand: “For a new virus, we don’t know anything about it. We go to Scopus and type it in, see what we get. It’s like a snowball; you start with something, you get more information, you look at the references, build up your knowledge base and also learn the names of which groups are working on it.”
Chris and his team often take on rapid innovation projects in addition to their work on existing products. In one such case, the team needed to rapidly develop a test for a virus that had jumped continents and threatened a vulnerable livestock population. The broad overview of global, interdisciplinary scientific information available on Scopus helped them get up to speed by quickly identifying both relevant literature and a fellow researcher with whom to partner in calibrating data.
Chris explains: “Scopus was important in learning where else in the world people have similar issues with similar viruses. From literature we learned that similar viruses are important in Australia and China. We looked at which viruses are involved and what these countries are doing with them. Then we contacted the key opinion leaders in these areas to understand what’s needed and what they have already.”
Getting this information fast was crucial: “Scopus was very, very helpful because we were able to easily get this information – in this case which viruses are very close to the ones we were researching and which scientists are working on that. Scopus had a big impact, because without it, our decisions would have been delayed.”