In this part of the course we show you how to find articles on a particular topic, within Scopus.
By default Scopus searches in all its content: all publication years, all document types and all subject areas. When you click the link Add date range you can select a publication range. Filtering on document types and subject areas is possible after you have performed the search.
The default startpage of Scopus is Documents. This search alllows you to search by fields, like Authors, Article title or Keywords. By default the field Article Title, Abstract, Keywords is selected, which allows you to search these fields in one request. This is very useful if you want to search for articles on a certain topic. In the dropdown menu you’ll see all available search options.
To combine search fields you can use these boolean operators:
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AND |
finds only those documents that contain all of the terms |
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OR |
finds documents that contain any of the terms. This can by useful when using synonyms, alternative spellings or abbreviations |
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AND NOT |
excludes documents that include the specified term from the search |
Scopus uses these wildcards:
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? |
replaces a single character anywhere in a word. Use one question mark for each character you want to replace |
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* |
replaces multiple characters anywhere in a word |
Scopus applies word stemming: using the singular form of a word in your search retrieves the singular, plural, and possessive forms of most words.
In the Advanced Search two extra search operators are available:
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PRE/n |
where the first term in the search must precede the second by a specified number of terms (n) |
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W/n |
where the terms in the search must be within a specified number of terms (n); either word may appear first |
The operators are processed in this order:
Use braces to search for exact phrases, like {job interview}. When you use double quotes, like “job interview”, you’ll find documents where your search terms appear adjacent to each other, but when you use ”…” plurals are automatically included as well (job interviews will also be included) and you can use wildcards.
You can add more text boxes, by clicking + Add search field. You can search different fields for each text box. For example, you can use one to search for an author name, and the other box for keywords.
