Basic and Advanced searching in Scopus
Basic Searching
On the Scopus homepage, under Start Exploring, there are tab options for searching by Documents, Authors, Research Discovery, Organizations, or Scopus AI.
A Documents search is the default search.
2. After selecting a search tab, select the fields to search within from the Search within drop-down menu that relate to specific parts of a document such as title, author, keywords, or ISSN. By default, Scopus will search in the Article title, Abstract and Keywords of documents.
3. Enter your terms in the Search documents field; select 'Search'.
Note: To add additional search term lines, select 'Add search field'. Each new search field is combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT.
Select ‘Add date range’ to either select a publication date range or to specify an ‘added to Scopus’ date range.
In Scopus, curly brackets are used to indicate an exact phrase, while quotation marks indicate an approximate or loose phrase. An asterisk can be used as a wildcard to get various spelling of the endings of words.
Search tips for searching in Scopus by document, author, or by affiliation
4. By default, the search results are sorted by date. Use the ‘Sort by’ drop-down menu to sort in a different order.
5. To refine search results, use the Filters options in the Refine Results column to the left of the search results.
6. To select single or multiple records, select the corresponding checkbox next to the record number. To select all records on a page, select the ‘All’ checkbox at the top of the list. Once search results have been selected, there are options at the top of the results list to ‘Export’ those selected items to a file or to a reference management tool; ‘Download’ documents using the Scopus Document Download Manager; or use the ‘Citation overview’ to track how often articles have been cited. Selecting ‘More’ gives you the following options: ‘Save to list;’ ‘View Cited by;’ or ‘View references.’
Scopus Basic Search - video tutorial
Advanced Searching
An advanced search allows you to enter complex search queries using field codes, Boolean and proximity operators to narrow the scope of your search.
Enter your search terms in the search box. You can select the down arrow to see some of the more commonly used field codes. By clicking on the Advanced search option, you’ll see a full list of available field codes, including the subject area field.
For more information on setting up a search query in Scopus, you can select ‘Search tips.’ From your 'Saved searches' list, you can combine queries as a new search by selecting 'Combine queries'.
Search Strategies
Boolean operators
SCOPUS supports a Boolean syntax, which is a type of search allowing users to combine keywords with operators such as AND, NOT and OR to further produce more relevant results. For example, a Boolean search could be "heart" AND "brain". This would limit the search results to only those documents containing the two keywords.
You can use Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT) in your search. If you use more than one operator in your search, Scopus interprets your search according to the order of precedence. You can also use proximity operators (pre/n, w/n) with Boolean operators.
Boolean operator AND
Use AND to include two or more search terms; results of these Boolean searches will include all the search terms.
Example: the search "patellar luxation" AND dogs will yield article results that contain both the phrase patellar luxation and the term dogs.
Boolean operator OR
Use OR to find results that include one or the other search term, as well as both search terms.
Example: the search inguinal hernia OR perineal hernia will yield article results that contain the terms inguinal hernia or the terms perineal hernia, as well as articles with all the terms.
Boolean operator NOT
Use NOT to exclude a term from your search results.
Example: the search umbilical hernia NOT dogs will yield article results with the terms umbilical hernia that do not contain the term dogs.
Boolean operator NEAR
The Boolean proximity operator NEAR allows you to search for terms that are located near each other; the terms can appear in any order in the articles retrieved. Use the search NEAR/x to indicate the maximum number of words between your search terms. If you want to incorporate a phrase in a proximity search, put the phrase in quotations.
Example: the search rabies NEAR/5 rabbits will yield article results in which the terms rabies rabbits appear within five words of each other in the title or article abstract.
Phrase searching
Loose phrases vs. separate words
If you do not specify anything between two words, Scopus automatically joins them with AND, so the words in the phrase may not be searched together.
To search for a phrase in Scopus use double quotations marks (“). Doing so tells Scopus this is a “loose phrase,” meaning that the words must be together and will allow for wildcards and lemmatization (finding both singular and plural forms, see below).
Example: "conversion disorder"
- Enter conversion disorder in the search form and Scopus interprets it as ‘conversion’ and ‘disorder.’ You results could find documents relating to both “disorders of vision” and “image conversion”.
- Whereas, when you enter “conversion disorder” (with the double quotations) Scopus looks specifically for the words ‘conversion’ and ‘disorder’ to be together in the fields you are searching.
The results received from this search ran on February 17, 2022: Without quotations = 15,209 items; With double quotations = 3,946 items.
Use curly brackets { } if you want to search for an exact phrase:
- Accented characters: work with or without the accent included
Example: Dvořák and Dvorak both return the same results
- Lemmatization: (similar but not quite the same as truncation or stemming) means that singular and plural forms, and well as adjectives, will be found if you type any of the variants. You can override this behavior by using the EXACT PHRASE marker—accolades or curly brackets—which will give an exact match of what you type (this does not apply to accented characters). See bulleted point below.
Examples: attack and attacks; wide and wider
- Equivalents: will find the equivalent terms/symbols
Examples: ω and omega; behaviour and behavior
- Punctuation: Commas, hyphens,?, ! etc., are ignored
- Stop words: Words like “the,” “it,” and “of” are excluded from search (Refer to the list found in Scopus help)
- Override with Exact phrase: { } will find only an exact match for a word, phrase or character (including stop words)
Use proximity operators to find words near one another
By including proximity operators in your search, you may find articles you might otherwise miss. There are two proximity operators you can use:
- Preceding (Pre/n): The first word must be no more that (n) words apart from the second word
- Within (W/n): It doesn’t matter which word comes before the other
Example for Pre/n: You are searching for content related to zika virus. You could do a loose phrase search (“zika virus”), which is a good start, but you might miss literature that talks about ‘zika and dengue virus.’
Instead, try to enter your search using: Pre/n: zika Pre/2 virus
This will find literature where ‘zika’ precedes ‘virus’ within 2 words, such as both “zika virus” and “zika and dengue virus”
Example for W/n: Enter your search using the within operator, for example: zika W/2 virus
This would look for ‘virus infection with zika,’ ‘Virus like zika,’ ‘virus, zika,’ ‘zika virus,’ etc.
Truncation / Wildcards
In any word or “loose phrase” you can use wildcards to help when you’re unsure of spelling, or when a word has multiple spelling variations, or if you’re looking for chemicals. There are two wildcard types, ? and *.
- ? represents any single character
Example: wom?n retrieves both woman and women
- * represents any number of characters, even zero
Examples:
comput* returns computer, computers, computerize and computerization
*tocopherol finds α-tocopherol, γ-tocopherol , δ-tocopherol, tocopherol, etc.
Scopus help files
As you build your search, you can always refer to the “search tips” button in the top left corner of the search form (or use the ‘Help’ button in the top navigation bar) to access helpful information on search syntax and access tutorials.