Your brilliance, connected

Content
Coverage
Guide

Scopus is a source-neutral abstract and citation database curated by independent
subject matter experts. It places powerful discovery and analytics tools in thehands of researchers, librarians, institutional research managers and funders.

Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Scopus — an overview.................................................................................................................................................................. 4
1.2 Content Selection & Advisory Board............................................................................................................................................ 6
1.3 Purpose and scope....................................................................................................................................................................... 6

2. Coverage of source types
2.1 Serial source types........................................................................................................................................................................ 7
2.2 One-off books.............................................................................................................................................................................. 8
2.3 Other sources............................................................................................................................................................................... 8

3. Coverage of metadata
3.1 Document types........................................................................................................................................................................... 9
3.2 Article data................................................................................................................................................................................... 12
3.3 Author data.................................................................................................................................................................................. 15
3.4 Affiliation data.............................................................................................................................................................................. 16

4. Coverage of sources
4.1 Scopus title list.............................................................................................................................................................................. 17
4.2 Scopus title evaluation................................................................................................................................................................. 17
4.3 Global coverage............................................................................................................................................................................ 20
4.4 Subject area coverage................................................................................................................................................................... 20
4.5 Complete coverage...................................................................................................................................................................... 21
4.6 MEDLINE coverage...................................................................................................................................................................... 21

5. Processing of Scopus content ..................................................................................................................................................... 22

3

1. Introduction
1.1 Scopus — an overview
Scopus, launched in November 2004, is a source-neutral
abstract and citation database curated by independent subject
matter experts who are recognized leaders in their fields.

Scopus at a glance

Scopus puts powerful discovery and analytics tools in thehands of researchers, librarians, research managers andfunders to promote ideas, people and institutions.

27,950 active titles: (see section 4.1)

Updated March 2023.

• 26,591 active peer-reviewed journals(including 6,128 Gold Open Access journals)• 192 trade journals• 1,167 book series• 11.7+ million conference papers from 148,500+
worldwide events• “Articles-in-Press” from 9,100+ journals(see section 5)

292,000+ stand-alone books
Publishers indexedin Scopus

90.6+ million records: (see section 3.1)
• 84+ million records post-1969 with references• 6.5+ million records pre-1970, with the oldest
record dating back to 1788

49.2+ million patent records from five patentoffices: (see section 2.3)

Elsevier 9%

Emerald 1%

Springer Nature 9%

Brill 1%Taylor & Francis 7%

Oxford University Press 1%

Wiley-Blackwell 5%

Cambridge University Press 1%

SAGE 2%IEEE 1%

Wolters Kluwer Health 1%

Other 60%

Walter de Gruyter 1%

For additional information and updates, please refer
to: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content andfollow the Scopus blog: http://blog.scopus.com/.

Organization
profilesTrusted, curated
content

Researcher profiles

Structured search andin-product analytics

Data exports
and APIs

Journal, article andauthor metrics

Enabling Technologies• Content Selection andAdvisory Board (CSAB)• Big Data Technology• Machine Learning• Semantic Technology• Natural Language Processing• Entity Resolution• Advanced Data Science

Publication data

Unpaywall data

Funding data
PlumX metrics

MEDLINE data

Datasets

Preprint server data

Scopus helps address key institutional research challenges and supports a range of institutional stakeholders:
Progress your research

Evaluate your research

Reflect your research

Key Challenges

Intuitive, powerful search, trusted
Powerful linked data, disambiguated, The most accurate reflections of your researchcontent and comprehensive content connected to key research entities
entities, structured in linked, flexible data
Insights to help you progress
your research with confidence

Insights for comprehensive
evaluations you can trust

Built to scale, integrate and hone to meetyour most stringent demands and highest
value decisions• Teaching next generation
researchers• Signaling researcher impact• Inform global rankings calculations• Signaling organizational impact• Inform national and regional assessments• Supporting career growth& development• Glean insights from custom adaptations
and analyses• Helping research thrive• Inform analyses of global and regional
research trends• Supporting the scholarly record

Stakeholders• Power repositories and RIMS with profile data
• Librarians• Librarians• Librarians• Students• Heads of department• Heads of department• Faculty & researchers• Faculty & researchers• Faculty & researchers• Editors• Research services• Research services

51.2 Content Selection & Advisory Board
The Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) isan international group of scientists, researchers and librarians
who represent the major scientific disciplines. Year round, theboard members are responsible for reviewing all titles that aresuggested to Scopus.
The CSAB is comprised of 17 Subject Chairs, each representinga specific subject field. The board works with the Scopus teamto understand how Scopus is used, what content is relevant
for users and what enhancements should be made.
The recommendations of the CSAB directly influence theoverall direction of Scopus and the prioritization of newcontent requests to ensure that Scopus content stays
international and relevant.
Scopus works with multiple local boards with the goal to further
advance the overall standards and quality of journals publishedin non-English speaking countries. Currently, local boards arein place in China, Thailand, Russia and South Korea.

The CSAB is integral in determining content
strategy by:• Recommending long-term content approaches to ensurethat Scopus remains focused on the research community’s
information needs.
• Keeping the Scopus team abreast of trends anddevelopments in the research community, such as new
standards, protocols or software with which to integrate.

1.3 Purpose and scopeThis document is designed to provide readers with a complete
overview of all aspects of content coverage in Scopus.
Non-content aspects of Scopus (e.g., interface, search and otherfunctionality) are not included within the scope of this document.

The CSAB’s primary function is to evaluate and determine
which peer-reviewed titles are accepted into Scopus, and which
titles are excluded. To ensure both the broadest coverage andhighest quality content is included, the CSAB maintains andfollows a transparent and robust selection policy. This policy isreviewed on a regular basis (see section 4.2).

See a roster of the CSAB members:
elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content/scopus-content-selection-and-advisory-board.

2. Coverage of source types
The source types covered in Scopus are either serial
publications that have an ISSN (International Standard
Serial Number) such as journals, book series andsome conference series, or non-serial publications thathave an ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
like one-off book publications or one-off conferences.
To ensure that coverage, discoverability, profiles andimpact measurement for research in all subject fields
is accounted for, Scopus covers different source types.

Inactive journals, bookseries, trade journals
36.6%

Active journals
60.5%

2.1 Serial source types
Scopus indexes serial publications ( journals, trade journals,
book series and conference series) that have been assigned
an ISSN. In addition, Scopus indexes one-off conferences
and one-off books which enter Scopus through different
methods than serial publications with ISSNs.

Journals
Journals make up the bulk of the content in Scopus and canhave various physical formats (e.g., print, electronic). Titles
are selected according to our content coverage policy (formore information see section 4.2). Any peer-reviewed serial
publication with an ISSN can be suggested for review andwill be covered in Scopus once approved. Exceptions include
but are not limited to one-off proceedings, newsletters,
secondary sources or patent publications.

Trade journals
Percentagesof Scopus serial
publications

Active trade journals
0.4%

Active book series
2.4%*Conference series are not displayed in this graphTrade journals are serial publications covering, and intended
to reach, a specific industry, trade or type of business. Thesepublications are usually magazine-type periodicals witharticles on topical subjects, news items and advertisementsthat appeal to those in the field. Trade journals are seldom
refereed and do not always have an editorial board. Abstracts
are usually short or nonexistent, and few or no references are
given. Usually an ISSN is available. Trade journals are includedin Scopus because users and librarians consider selected
articles to be scientifically relevant. Only articles or reviewsof scientific relevance are included in Scopus. The minimum
requirements for trade journal items to be captured are:(1) minimum of one page, (2) minimum of one mentioned
author (for more information about the regular document
type policy, see section 3.1).

Book series
The significance of each source type varies per disciplineand Scopus takes a highly targeted approach of identifying
content types that are significant to each discipline andexpanding coverage accordingly. As a result, some content
types are more broadly covered in a discipline than others.
For example, books are more broadly covered in arts &humanities and social science and conferences are more
broadly covered in computer science.

A book series is a serial publication that has an overall series
title, an ISSN, and in which every volume and/or issue is also
a book with an ISBN. Usually, but not always, each book has abook title separate from the series title and a different editoror editors. Typically, each book is a monographic publication.
Book series are usually published irregularly.

7

Conference material

2.2 One-off books

Conference material enters Scopus in three different ways:(1) as a special issue of a regular journal, (2) as a conference
series, (3) as a one-off conference proceeding.

A non-serial book is a publication with an ISBN, which canhave different physical formats (e.g., print, electronic) and isusually a monograph or composed work.

Proceedings can be published as serial publication with
ISSN or non-serial with ISBN and may contain either thefull articles of the papers presented or only the abstracts.
The source title usually includes words like proceeding(s),meeting(s), conference(s), symposium/symposia, seminar(s)or workshop(s), although some journals also include
proceeding(s) in the title.

Along with book series, book coverage also includes
monographs, edited volumes, major reference works andgraduate level textbooks. Over 292,000 book titles have been
added to Scopus and approximately 20,000 more titles areadded annually.

Scopus covers proceedings that publish full-text papers, i.e.,
document type conference papers (see section 3.1), whereas
conferences that publish only abstracts (meeting abstracts) are
not considered for coverage.
Over 12% of the Scopus database is comprised of conference
papers (over 11.7 million) of which 2.9+ million are publishedin journals, book series and other sources. The remaining
8.8+ million are published in conference proceedings.
Conference coverage in Scopus is focused primarily on thosesubject areas where conference papers represent a substantial
portion of published research, e.g., engineering, computerscience and some areas of physics. Scopus is continuously
expanding coverage of conference material primarily forthe subject domains mentioned above published by major
engineering and computer sciences publishers and societies.
Scopus covers conference content from over 148 thousand
conference events, resulting in over 11.7 million conference
papers.

Over 12% of the Scopus database iscomprised of conference papers (over11.7 million) of which 2.9+ million are
published in journals, book series andother sources. The remaining 8.8+ million
are published in conference proceedings.

This expansion significantly increases the breadth anddepth of coverage for book-oriented disciplines in the social
sciences and humanities. Books are indexed on both a bookand a chapter level. Book selection policy is publisher-based,
meaning publishers are reviewed based on the relevancy andquality of their complete books list.
Books can be suggested through the Scopus Books Suggestion
form: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/forms/publisher-bookssuggestion. Once a publisher is accepted, all books from thatpublisher deemed in scope are indexed in Scopus. To see a listof the publishers included, please refer to the book title list:
elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content.

2.3 Other sources
Secondary documents
In Scopus, approximately 227 million records are non-core,or secondary documents. These are records that have been
cited in Scopus core records, but are not themselves indexedin Scopus. The most highly cited of these non-core items areoften books and older journal articles.

Patents
There are over 49.2 million patent records derived from fivepatent offices available in Scopus:
1. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
2. European Patent Office (EPO)
3. US Patent Office (USPTO)

Serial conference titles that have a registered ISSN canbe suggested for Scopus coverage via the regular title
evaluation process.

4. Japanese Patent Office (JPO)
5. UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO.GOV.UK)3. Coverage of metadata

3.1 Document types
Scopus coverage focuses on primary document types fromserial publications. Primary means that the author is identicalto the researcher in charge of the presented findings. Scopus
does not include secondary document types, where the author
is not identical to the person behind the presented research,such as obituaries and book reviews (see section 2.3).

Documents going back to 1970 contain references. For
documents prior to 1996 the references were added fromthe archives of 60 major publishers. These major publishers
include: Springer Nature, Wiley Blackwell, Taylor & Francis,
IEEE, American Physical Science, Elsevier and more.

Scopus currently has over 90.6 million core records:• 84+ million records post-1969• 6.5+ million records pre-1970, with the oldest records datingback to 1788
• Approximately 3 million new records are added each year
(5,500/day)9

Document types covered in Scopus

Document typeDefinition

ArticleOriginal research or opinion.
Characteristics: Articles in peer-reviewed journals are usually several pages in length, most often
subdivided into sections: abstract, introduction, materials & methods, results, conclusions, discussion
and references. However, case reports, technical and research notes and short communications arealso considered to be articles and may be as short as one page in length. Articles in trade journals are
typically shorter than in peer-reviewed journals, and may also be as brief as one page in length.

Article-in-Press(AiP)

Accepted article made available online before official publication (see section 5).

Book

A whole monograph or entire book.
Characteristics: Book type is assigned to the whole. Additionally, for books with individual chapters, eachchapter, along with a general item summarizing the book, is also indexed with the source type Book.

Chapter

A book chapter.
Characteristics: A complete chapter in a book or book series volume where the item is identified as achapter by a heading or section indicator.

Conference
paper

Original article reporting data presented at a conference or symposium.

Data paper

Searchable metadata documents describing an online accessible dataset, or group of datasets.

Characteristics: Conference papers are of any length reporting data from a conference, with the
exception of conference abstracts. Conference papers may range in length and content from full papers
and published conference summaries to short items as short as one page in length (also see section 2.1).

Characteristics: The intent of a data paper is to offer descriptive information on the related dataset(s)focusing on data collection, distinguishing features, access, and potential reuse rather than information
on data processing and analysis.
Editorial

Summary of several articles, or provides editorial opinions or news.
Characteristics: Editorials are typically identified as editorial, introduction, leading article, preface orforeword, and are usually listed at the beginning of the table of contents.

Erratum

Report of an error, correction or retraction of a previously published paper. The erratum notice is linked
to the original published paper this concerns and vice versa.
Characteristics: Errata are short items citing errors in, corrections to, or retractions of a previously
published article in the same journal to which a citation is provided.

Document typeDefinition

LetterLetter to or correspondence with the editor.
Characteristics: Letters are individual letters or replies. Each individual letter or reply is processed as asingle item.

Note

Note, discussion or commentary.
Characteristics: Notes are short items that are not readily suited to other item types. They may or may
not share characteristics of other item types, such as author, affiliation and references. Discussions andcommentaries that follow an article are defined as notes and considered to be items in their own right.
Notes also include questions and answers, as well as comments on other (often translated) articles. In
trade journals, notes are generally shorter than half a page in length.

Retracted article

Published articles that the author(s) or publisher has requested to retract. The erratum or retraction
notice announcing the retraction is linked to the retracted article.
Characteristics: Articles with a published retraction note will be updated to the document type
“Retracted.” Usually, these articles are indicated with the words “retracted” or “retraction”.

ReviewSignificant review of original research, also includes conference papers.
Characteristics: Reviews typically have an extensive bibliography. Educational items that review specificissues within the literature are also considered to be reviews. As non-original articles, reviews lack themost typical sections of original articles such as materials & methods and results.

Short survey

Short or mini-review of original research.
Characteristics: Short surveys are similar to reviews, but usually are shorter (not more than a few pages)
and with a less extensive bibliography.

The Scopus editorial team is responsible for the document type classification of records.

Examples of document types not covered in Scopus
Document typeDefinition

Book reviews

Scopus does not cover book reviews. The reason for this is that they do not represent primary literature,and the publishers in whose journals they appear often regard them as full-text. As a full-text article,
Scopus would only be able to display the title of the book review, which is often identical to the actual
book, causing confusion to Scopus users. Lastly, book reviews are not often cited in research literature.
As an example of this, the average citation per item for the “Journal of Academic Librarianship” drops by
50% (2.13 to 1.12) when book reviews are included.

Conference
meeting abstracts

Scopus does not cover conference meeting abstracts. Meeting abstracts are not a complete and uniquerecord of research and can drive ambiguity or duplication. Furthermore, the scientific content andsubstance of meeting abstracts is generally not peer-reviewed and is limited as they are typically written
before the actual research is complete.

113.2 Article data
Abstracts
Over 68.7 million records in Scopus contain an abstract inorder to provide users with as much information as possible
about the research presented in the database. The original
abstract is available where the original published article has an
abstract. Specifically for older content and certain document
types there is not always an abstract available in the original
document. The availability of abstracts in Scopus helps toensure that users find all relevant results for their searchacross title, abstract and keywords.

Keywords and index terms
Index terms are displayed for 80% of the titles coveredin Scopus. These index terms are derived from thesaurithat Elsevier owns or licenses and are added to improvesearch recall. A team of professional indexers manages
the assignment of index terms to records according to thefollowing controlled vocabularies:• Engineering terms (engineering, technology,
physical sciences)• Emtree medical terms (life sciences, health sciences)• MeSH (life sciences, health sciences)• GEOBASE Subject Index (geology, geography, earth andenvironmental sciences)• FLX terms, WTA terms (fluid sciences, textile sciences)• Regional Index (geology, geography, earth andenvironmental sciences)• Species Index (biology, life sciences)
There is no limit to the number of index terms that Scopus
can add to records. However, in the case of Emtree and MeSH
terms (both terms are added to records where available), only
the index terms that have a direct relation with the topic of thearticle are displayed and made searchable on Scopus in order
to avoid retrieving irrelevant results.
For Emtree, the index terms with a direct relation are theMajor Focus and the mentioned index terms. For MeSH, theindex terms with a direct relation are Major Topics and Minor
Topics. For the Engineering indexed terms, the controlledterms, uncontrolled terms and main headings are displayedand searchable in Scopus. All index terms are displayed for theother subject indices.

For example, adverse drug reaction terms are only relevant
when users are searching for articles in the context of adverse
drug reactions, a feature which is only possible with thesupport of a thesaurus (not available in Scopus).
No thesauri are available or searchable in Scopus.
The Scopus capturing department assigns Chemical Abstract
Service (CAS) numbers as part of the normal Emtree Drugs/
Chemicals/Thesaurus indexing. Emtree has ca. 24,222 CAS
numbers, which by no means is comparable with Chemical
Databases. CAS assignment process is purely focusing
on titles that are also covered by Embase. For example,
searching for CASREGNUMBER(1*) in Scopus will retrieve
over 9 million items.

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals(UN SDGs)
Scopus lists the United Nations’ Sustainable Development
Goals (UN SDGs) relevant to a paper on that paper’s
Document details page. Clicking on one of the listed SDGs
opens a window containing additional information on thegoal, with an option to analyze further in SciVal.
The SDG framework, with its 17 interlinked goals, continues togrow in importance globally:• It is increasingly used to evaluate the contribution ofuniversities to society; in 2019, Times Higher Education
launched the THE Impact Rankings, a global performancetable that assesses universities against the SDGs with thehelp of this Scopus data set.
• Universities are monitoring and mapping how the work of
their researchers contributes to the SDGs.
• Many funders now want evidence that the research they fundis positively impacting society, and is aligned with the SDGs.
Listing the relevant SDGs on the Document details page
makes it easier to understand their relationship to a research
publication. The SDG labels can also provide a useful reference
when applying for funding, by demonstrating that research ismaking a difference in a particular area.
This also contributes another dimension to an array of metrics
and indicators that one can use to understand research impact.

SciVal Topics

Funding Data

A SciVal Topic is a collection of documents with a common
intellectual interest and can be large or small, new or old,growing or declining in momentum. Over time, new Topics
will surface, and as Topics are dynamic, they will evolve. As
with the nature of today’s research landscape many Topics are
multidisciplinary and old Topics may be dormant, but they
still exist. In addition, researchers themselves are mobile,and work in various research areas and thereby contribute tomultiple Topics.

The full text funding acknowledgement sections are included
for documents (where applicable) going back to 2008. This
enables the text to be searchable and makes it easier to findout what research is being funded and by whom. Funding
information is captured if the funding body is included in the
FundRef ontology: crossref.org/fundref/. This includes thefollowing information:

These Topics are powered by SciVal and are displayed
directly in Scopus on Document details pages along theirprominence percentile score, an indicator that shows thecurrent momentum of a Topic. You can click on the Topiclabel on Document details pages to explore the Topic or
open it in SciVal for further analysis.

• Funding Sponsor (i.e., the National Science Foundation)• Funding Acronym (i.e., NSF)
• Funding Number (i.e., INT-9321584)
Through the Advanced search form on Scopus, a funding search
can be performed to look for a particular funding field (sponsor,
acronym or number) or to search all funding information. The
search terms associated with funding information are:

SciVal Topics are also available on Scopus Author Profiles. Users
can select the ‘Topics’ tab to view an author’s associated topics.

• FUND-ALL searches the funding acknowledgment text in
addition to other funding fields

Article metrics• FUND-SPONSOR searches the sponsor providing the grantor funding for the work

Article metrics allow you to evaluate both citation impact andlevels of community engagement around an article.

• FUND-ACR searches the acronym for a sponsor• Scopus metrics: Citation metrics calculated and provided
using Scopus data. These include Citation Count,
View Count, Field-Weighted Citation Impact, Citation
Benchmarking and the Cited by Graph.
• PlumX Metrics: As people interact with research they leave
online footprints. Plum Analytics gathers these footprints
and creates and categorizes metrics on individual pieces
of research output (articles, conference proceedings, bookchapters, and more). These metrics are collectively known
as PlumX Metrics.
By categorizing the metrics into five categories — Usage,
Captures, Mentions, Social Media, and Citations — PlumX
helps make sense of a large amount of metrics data andenables analysis by comparing metrics that are compatible.
• Policy Citations: With the addition of policy citation dataon Scopus, users can see where research has been cited inpolicy documents to help demonstrate the societal impactof a piece of research output. Overton, currently the only
policy data aggregator, provides Elsevier and Scopus with
exclusive access to their data via PlumX Metrics. On Scopus,
this is available on the Documents details page of an article.

• FUND-NO searches the grant or award number

Open Access
Open Access (OA) is represented at both the document andthe journal level in Scopus.
Scopus users can locate OA journals and/or articles byconducting a Document search, Advanced search, or using
the Scopus Sources feature. Any search result providing
documents or sources that are considered OA, indicate they
are Open Access below the title.

Open Access for documents
Open Access filters are available in Scopus to provide greater
clarity and a breakdown of the type of OA per document.
From the search results page, users can filter by all OA
documents or by each of the OA tags: gold, hybrid gold,
green and bronze.
From the Scopus Advanced search, the OA filters are foundunder the Document field code section. The values, in
combination with the OA field code, allow users to build
queries using the OA filters.
The source of OA documents in Scopus is Unpaywall, a databaserun by Impactstory (a non-profit organization) which harvests
OA content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories.

13

The following Open Access filters are available for documents in Scopus:
FacetsInformation label

Definition

Gold

Gold
(Open access-only journal)

Published version with Creative Commons license, available on publisher
platform. Documents are in journals which only publish open access.

Hybrid GoldGold(hybrid journal)

Published version with Creative Commons license, available on publisher
platform. Documents are in journals which provide authors the choice of
publishing open access.

BronzeOther free-to-read at
Publisher

Published version of record or manuscript accepted for publication, forwhich the publisher has chosen to provide temporary or permanent
free access. Bronze status is assigned to a document if there is another(publisher-specific) license other than a Creative Commons license, nolicense at all, or the license is not clear.

GreenFree-to-read at Repository

Published version or manuscript accepted for publication, available at
repository. Documents may also be available gold or other free-to-read on
the publisher platform.

Open Access for journals

PubMed ID

Open Access journals are indicated in orange text as Open
Access on any results list where they are available, the Scopus
Sources page, or on a Source details page.

The unique identifier for MEDLINE documents, PubMed ID,
is searchable via Advanced Search. When available, it appearson the record page, as well as in the export of records.

For the full OA journal list, users can download the Scopus
Title list here: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content, which
includes a filter on Open Access status.

References

In Scopus, journals are registered as being OA only if they
are registered as Gold OA or Subsidized OA at one or bothof the following:• Directory of Open Access Journals: doaj.org• Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources: road.issn.org

Open Access (OA) is represented at both the
document and the journal level in Scopus.
Scopus users can locate OA journals and/or
articles by conducting a Document search,
Advanced search, or using the Scopus
Sources feature.

References in Scopus go back to 1970. For documents prior
to 1996 the references were added from the archives of 60
major publishers. These major publishers include: Springer
Nature, Wiley Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, IEEE, American
Physical Science, Elsevier and more.
By having the references available back to 1970:
1. Users have the ability to measure impact, perform
historical citation trend analyses and conduct moreaccurate evaluations of authors who have published as
early as 1970.
2. More accurate and higher h-index rankings are available
for those senior researchers — many of whom who
subsequently have become key influencers and decision
makers — who published most prolifically before themid-1990S.

3.3 Author dataAwarded Grants Data

It is possible to search Scopus based on author data. The Scopus
Author Identifier automatically identifies and matches an author
with all his/her research output. This tool is particularly relevant
for analyzing citation metrics for authors, as well as specificarticles by an author. The data can also be used to find authors
or reviewers to collaborate with or for hiring purposes. There
are 17.6 million author profiles in Scopus.

Awarded grants have been incorporated as a tab on Scopus
Author Profiles.

The Scopus Author Identifier assigns each author in Scopus
a unique number and groups together all the documents
written by that author. To determine which author names
should be grouped together under a single identifier number,the Scopus Author Identifier uses an algorithm that matches
author names based on their affiliation, address, subject area,source title, dates of publication citations and co-authors.

Awarded grants are captured from 2010 onward.

The first phase is a beta release which shows competitive awards
from U.S. funding bodies. The Scopus team will continue togather feedback from users to allow for continual improvementof the feature and of the data. The data will continue to expand
to include additional regions and funding sources.

An awarded grant is an award, usually financial, given by
a funder (typically a company, foundation, or government)
to an individual or organization to facilitate a goal or
reward performance.

An author can request corrections to their author details directlyfrom their profile page using the Scopus Author Feedback
Wizard (AFW). AFW guides the author through the stepsof finding the correct profile(s) in Scopus and checking the
publications it contains. Authors receive an email notification
when their requested changes are visible in Scopus. Profilechanges are implemented within five working days.

Phase 1 awarded grants in Scopus shows the historicalfunding awards made by >70 U.S. funding bodies. Awarded
grants appear on author profiles where the researcher
is listed as the Principal Investigator or Co-awardee onawarded grant records in the Scopus grants database. Since
in Scopus grants are only linked to author profiles, only
funding bodies whose grants are awarded to individuals,
rather than institutions, will be included.

Preprints

Awarded grants do not affect existing publication and citation
metrics in Scopus.

A preprint is a version of a scholarly paper that precedes
publication in a peer-reviewed journal and act as an early
indication of research. Preprints are available in Scopus
Author Profiles to help users discover the latest contributionsof a researcher.
Preprints reside on preprint servers, which cover a set of
domains and allow for dissemination, laying claim to an idea,
and help collect feedback prior to submission. In some fields,
preprints are the main communication vehicle. Preprints differ
from Articles-in-Press in that preprints are not peer-reviewed
and not accepted for publication in a journal yet.
The preprint servers selected for Scopus are arXiv and ChemRxiv(Physical Sciences); bioRxiv and MedRxiv (Biomedical Sciences);
SSRN (Social Sciences); TechRxiv (Engineering, Computer
Science, and related technology); and Research Square(Multidisciplinary). Preprints follow their respective server’s
curation policies.

ORCID integration
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) is
a nonprofit organization dedicated to solving the nameambiguity problem in scholarly research by assigning a unique
identifier to each author. From their Scopus Author Profile,authors can import their list of publications in Scopus andtheir Scopus Author Identifier into ORCID. Once an author
connects their ORCID record with their Scopus profile, alink to their ORCID record will appear on their profile page.
Scopus and ORCID share and sync their data on a monthly
basis. Learn more about ORCID at orcid.org.

Preprints do not affect existing publication and citation
metrics in Scopus.

15

3.4 Affiliation data
It is possible to search Scopus based on affiliation data (using
the 94,800+ affiliation profiles). An organization’s Scopus
Affiliation details page gives a comprehensive view of thatorganization’s scholarly output, including author and document
counts and related visualizations. Users can sort and filter thedata in various ways.

Affiliation profiles are built using algorithmic processing
and Elsevier’s curated database of organizations. The Scopus
organization curation team conducts extensive research tomodel an organization and its relationships. This includes
a thorough 3–step process to capture the most accurate
representation of an organization as possible.

This tool is particularly relevant for deans, faculty heads andlibrarians in the academic market; researchers, project leaders
and those involved in competitive intelligence in the corporate
market; and funding bodies in the government market.

• Step 1: Understand country conventions andresearch landscape• Step 2: Capture name and address metadata; Identify andcapture variations in mentions in publications• Step 3: Identify and link to related organizations
Users who wish to modify their organization profile can do soby using the Institution Profile Wizard (IPW). Authorized users
can access the IPW via the Organization details page.

4. Coverage of sources
4.1 Scopus title list
The Scopus Journals title list contains ~43,400 titles in total,
including ~27,950 active titles and ~15,450 inactive titles(mostly predecessors of the active titles). The Scopus Books
title list contains 292,000+ books.
Complete lists of titles (for both journals and books) in
Scopus are available externally from the Scopus info site at:
elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content.
The lists are identical to the list available on Scopus.com in
the Sources section.
The title lists and the Sources section are updated 2-3 times
per year and include only journals and books with substantial
coverage on Scopus.com at the time of the update. Titles thatare newly added to Scopus will be visible in the title list andthe Sources section only as of the next update after the firstcontent appears on Scopus. To check whether the content of a
recently added title is already available on Scopus, perform anadvanced search on Scopus.com using the search code Source
Title (SRCTITLE) and entering the name of the title.
For more information about the Scopus subject areas, seesection 4.4.

Stand-alone non-serial books, conference proceedings andreports are also not included in the Scopus Sources section.
One-off book publications are listed in a separate book title
list and Conference Proceedings are listed under a separate
tab in the Scopus Excel Source Title List. Download the list
from our info site: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content.

4.2 Scopus title evaluation
In order to ensure that Scopus remains the most relevant
resource for all research in the sciences, technology, medicine,social sciences and arts & humanities fields, the CSAB
continually reviews new titles for inclusion, using transparent
selection criteria (see elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content/
content-policy-and-selection). New title suggestions may
come from librarians, publishers and journal editors, and canbe submitted using the Title Suggestion form on the Scopus
info site: suggestor.step.scopus.com/suggestTitle/step1.cfm.
Scopus receives approximately 3,500 serial title suggestions
on an annual basis. The number of suggested titles can varysignificantly per subject area from only a few titles (e.g., inchemistry) to several hundred (e.g., in social sciences).

Which titles are included in the title list andthe Sources section?
Neither the title list nor the titles included in the Sources
section on Scopus accurately reflect all the content in Scopus.
In fact, the Scopus database contains records of ~52,400
unique titles, which are all available via the Scopus basic
search functionality. There are 9,000 titles, however, which
are not included in either the title list or the Sources section
because these titles are:Stage 1

~3,500Stage 2~51%

• Pre-1996 discontinued (i.e., non-active) titles.
• Post-1995 titles with a very small incomplete number ofarticles, scattered among several years. Post-1995 titles
having child-parent relationships, however, are always
included (independent of the number of articles). Thereis no limit as to the number of articles present in Scopus
for an accepted journal for that journal to receive a Source
Details Page.

Stage 3~857

title suggestions
per year on average

meet the Scopus
minimum criteria~48%

are accepted after
the CSAB’s review

serial titles meet the full
Scopus criteria

17

Criteria for title selection

Content Selection & Advisory Board Subject Chairs

To be considered for review, all journal titles should meet allthese minimum criteria:

The Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) isan international group of scientists, researchers and librarians
who represent the major scientific disciplines. Year round, theboard members are responsible for reviewing all titles that aresuggested to Scopus.

• Consist of peer-reviewed content and have a publicly
available description of the peer review process• Be published on a regular basis and have an International
Standard Serial Number (ISSN) as registered with the ISSN
International Centre• Have content that is relevant for and readable by aninternational audience, i.e., have English language abstracts
and titles• Have a publicly available publication ethics and publication
malpractice statement
CSAB members have deep subject matter expertise and arecommitted to actively seeking out and selecting literature thatmeets the needs and standards of the research communitythat they represent. More information can be found on the
Scopus info site: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content/
content-policy-and-selection.
Journals eligible for review by the CSAB will be evaluated on
the following criteria in five categories:
Category

Criteria

Journalpolicy• Convincing editorial policy

Content

Scopus works with multiple local boards with the goal to further
advance the overall standards and quality of journals publishedin non-English speaking countries. Currently, local boards arein place in China, Thailand, Russia and South Korea.

Scopus title evaluation platform
The Scopus Title Evaluation Platform (STEP) is a web-based
editorial system, streamlining the entire title evaluation
process from submission until the final decision, including
the feedback to the suggestor and publisher/editor of newly
suggested titles. STEP offers several benefits, including:• Diversity in geographical distribution of editors• Diversity in geographical distribution of authors• Shorter decision-making cycle• Academic contribution to the field• Quality of and conformity to the stated aims
and scope of the journal• Readability of articles• Citedness of journal articles in Scopus• Editor standing

Publishing • No delays or interruptions in the regularity
regularity
publication schedule
Onlineavailability

The recommendations of the CSAB directly influence theoverall direction of Scopus and the prioritization of newcontent requests to ensure that Scopus content stays
international and relevant.

• Those suggesting new titles receive feedback on why
their title was accepted or rejected via a consistent processof communication• Type of peer-review• Clarity of abstracts

Journalstanding

The CSAB is comprised of 17 Subject Chairs, each representinga specific subject field. The Board works with the Scopus teamto understand how Scopus is used, what content is relevant
for users and what enhancements should be made.

• Full journal content available online• English language journal homepage available• Quality of journal homepage

When are new titles selected by the Content
Selection & Advisory Board added to Scopus?
Once a title is accepted for inclusion in Scopus, Elsevier willcontact the publisher to set up the content feed. After thecontent feed has been set up, it will take up to a few weeks
before the title will be added to Scopus.

Re-evaluation and ethics

Publication concerns

Content quality is paramount for Scopus. In addition tojournals undergoing a rigorous evaluation and selection
processes prior to acceptance into Scopus, they must also
demonstrate the ability to maintain their quality status year
over year.

A journal can also be flagged for re-evaluation based on
publication concerns at either the publisher or journal level.
Concerns for such journals are identified by Scopus or
flagged to Scopus by the research community. If the concern
is legitimate, the title will be added to the re-evaluation
program and re-evaluated by the CSAB in the year ofidentification of the publication concern.

To determine journal quality, Scopus runs the ongoingre-evaluation program, which identifies outlier andunderperforming journals in four different ways:
1. The journal is underperforming as it does not meet any of
the three metrics and benchmarks for journals in the same
subject area.
2. Concerns about the publication standards of the journalor publisher have been raised by formal complaints.
3. The journal shows outlier behavior based on its publishing
performance in Scopus.
4. Continuous curation based on CSAB feedback.

Metrics and benchmarks
MetricBenchmark and explanation

Self-citation
rate

The journal has a substantially higher selfcitation rate, when compared to peer journals
in its subject field.

Total citation
rate

The journal received a substantially lower
number of citations, when compared to peer
journals in its subject field.

CiteScore

The journal has a substantially lower
CiteScore, when compared to peer journals
in its subject field.

If a journal does not meet all of the three benchmarks fortwo consecutive years, it will be flagged for re-evaluation by
the independent CSAB.

Radar
In 2017 the Radar tool was launched, which is a data analytics
algorithm created by Elsevier Data Scientists to identify outlier
journal behavior in the Scopus database. Outlier journal
examples include rapid and unexplainable changes to numberof articles published or unexplainable changes in geographicaldiversity of authors or affiliations. Other features that thealgorithm considers are self-citation rate and publication
concerns, amongst others. The tool improves continuously
by incorporating new examples or rules. It runs quarterly
checking the all Scopus journals for outlier behavior.

Continuous curation
Since the establishment of the CSAB in 2010, Scopus has
continuously collected review data as part of the content
curation process. For example, the CSAB can indicate
whether any accepted title should be evaluated again in the
future. This is an ongoing process and ensures continuous
curation of Scopus content.
All titles identified for underperformance, publication standard
concerns, outlier behavior, or during continuous content
curation will be re-evaluated by the CSAB. The review criteria
for re-evaluation are identical to the Scopus content selection
criteria used for newly suggested titles. Upon completion of there-evaluation process, the CSAB will decide to either continue
a journal’s coverage or to discontinue the forward flow of
the journal’s coverage in Scopus (content covered in Scopus
prior to the re-evaluation completion will remain in Scopus).
Discontinued titles will only be considered for evaluation again
5 years after the discontinuation decision was made.
Titles discontinued from Scopus via the re-evaluation process
can be identified via the discontinued sources list, which
you can download from elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/
how-scopus-works/content/content-policy-and-selection

19

4.3 Global coverage

4.4 Subject area coverage

Scopus coverage is global by design to best serve researchers’
needs and ensure that relevant scientific information is
not omitted from the database. Titles from all geographicalregions are covered, including non-English titles as longas English abstracts can be provided with the articles. In
fact, approximately 20% of titles in Scopus are published inlanguages other than English, adding up to 40 local languages(or published in both English and another language).

Scopus offers the broadest, most integrated coverage ofpeer-reviewed literature and quality web sources acrossthe sciences, technology, medicine (STM), as well as social
sciences and arts & humanities (A&H).

Number of active titles indexed by Scopus vs. thenearest competitor based on geographical region
North
America
6,968
128% morethan nearest
competitor

Middle East
& Africa
1,017
184% morethan nearest
competitor

WesternEurope13,819141% morethan nearest
competitor

East Europe(incl. Russia + CIS)
2,282232% morethan nearest
competitor

Titles in Scopus are classified under four broad subject clusters(life sciences, physical sciences, health sciences and social
sciences & humanities), which are further divided into 27 major
subject areas and 300+ minor subject areas. Titles may belong
to more than one subject area. Download the title list on the
Scopus info site: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content.
The table below reflects the number of active titles by subject
cluster. Note: A title can fall in more than one subject area.
There are 27,950 titles in Scopus.
Social sciences:

Physical sciences:• Psychology• Economics• Business• A&H• Chemistry• Physics• Engineering

12,050

Health sciences:

Life sciences:• 100% MEDLINE• Nursing• Dentistry• Neuroscience• Pharmacology• Biology

7,747

Central &South America
944
210% morethan nearest
competitor

Asia
Pacific
2,687
246% morethan nearest
competitor

Australia &New Zealand
231
171% morethan nearest
competitor

9,298

5,280

Arts & humanities
Scopus has strong arts & humanities coverage with 4,950 titles.
Since 2014, more than 292,000 book titles have been added to
Scopus. As more than 55% of the added book titles represent
the arts & humanities and social sciences, this significantly
expands the coverage for these areas. When combined withthe strength of Scopus in bibliographic search, discoverability
and evaluation tools, expanded coverage allows users tobetter measure the impact and scholarly achievement of thehumanities in a more quantitative way.
Arts & humanities titles are part of the social sciences subject
cluster in Scopus. Users can exclude or limit to arts &humanities results from their search results by using therefine results overview.

4.5 Complete coverage

4.6 MEDLINE coverage

Scopus was launched in late November 2004. At thattime, Scopus contained 14,200 journals. There have been
approximately 13,750 new titles added to Scopus since 2004.
Starting in 2023, journal start coverage year will be from theyear of selection minus 4. This means that for a title selected
in 2023, its coverage would start from the first content
published in 2019 going forward and have five years’ worthof content. Exceptions are made to journals having previous
evaluation history.

MEDLINE is a database that can be hosted via the PubMed
platform by third parties. PubMed’s main component is
MEDLINE, but it also contains other data. Scopus has
permission to cover ~6,700 out of the total of ~7,000 MEDLINE
titles. Scopus also includes OLDMEDLINE content publishedbetween 1949 and 1965. For the majority of MEDLINE titles,
Scopus has agreements with the publishers directly andreceives the content from them. There are around 125 titles
for which Scopus has permission to cover and that MEDLINE
supplies directly to Scopus. In Scopus, these titles are referred
to as “MEDLINE sourced.” The advantages of covering
MEDLINE in Scopus is that the MEDLINE records are fully
integrated with the Scopus citation network and Scopus
Author Profiles.

Upon the launch of Scopus, the decision was made to
add cited references going back to 1996. In 2014, Scopus
announced the launch of the Cited Reference Expansion
project to include cited references in its database goingback to 1970. Documents going back to 1970 contain citedreferences, when provided by the publisher.

21

5. Processing of Scopus content
Obtaining content
Scopus content is obtained from over 7,000 publishers
worldwide. Scopus has content delivery agreements in placewith each publisher and receives content in both print andelectronic formats. Currently, 95% of material is received
electronically and/or sourced from the journal websites.

AiP for over 9,100 journals are provided by thefollowing publishers:

For over 95% of the journals in Scopus, the data frompublishers gets delivered via e-Feeds (XML or PDF deliveries)
or downloads from journal websites. This ensures the fastest
possible processing and indexing. On average, fully-indexed
article data will appear in Scopus within two to three weeksof publication on the publisher’s website. A diminishingnumber of publishers still supply their journal issues inpaper format. Processing and indexing of such data usuallytakes four to five weeks, depending on distribution anddelivery from publishers’ warehouses.

• Springer

Articles-in-Press (AiP)• World Scientific“Articles-in-Press” (AiP) are pre-published versions ofaccepted articles. AiP do contain cited references and are
de-duplicated once the final version is published and madeavailable in Scopus. Publishers usually use a File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) service to deliver the prepublished version to
Scopus once it has appeared on their website. Once received,
Scopus usually makes it available online within four days.
The average time it takes before an AiP becomes a publishedarticle in a specific issue, however, can vary from weeks tomonths depending on how often the journal is published(e.g., bi-weekly vs. quarterly).

• Cambridge University Press• Elsevier• Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers• Nature Publishing Group (NPG)• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)• BioMed Central (BMC)• Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins (LWW)• Thieme• American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science)• BMJ Publishing Group• Wiley Blackwell• American Psychological Association (APA)• Taylor & Francis• Primary Care Respiratory Society UK (PCRJ)
From the search results page, users can use the refine resultspane to limit their results to contain only AiPs by selecting thecheckbox next to ‘Article in Press’ within the Publication Stage
category, then selecting ‘Limit to’. Selecting ‘Exclude’ willremove AiPs from the search results.
Alternatively, from Advanced search, users can restrict theirsearch to articles in press by entering the search criteria then‘AND PUBSTAGE(AIP). Entering ‘AND NOT PUBSTAGE(AIP)’
allows users to search for published articles only, and notinclude AiP.
Another database with coverage of AiP is MEDLINE on
PubMed. However, this “early view” layer is not part of the
MEDLINE feed to third party vendors, so Scopus does notreceive AiP from MEDLINE. For more information about
MEDLINE coverage, see section 4.6.

Conclusion
This guide is designed to provide a complete overview of the content coveragein Scopus and corresponding policies. As Scopus is updated daily, the numberspresented in this guide may differ from current numbers.
To find up-to-date content numbers, please refer to the content page of our info
site: elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content. The numbers presented on the info
site are updated regularly throughout the year.

23

Your brilliance, connected
Scopus is a source-neutral abstract and citation
database curated by independent subject matter
experts. It places powerful discovery and analytics
tools in the hands of researchers, librarians,
institutional research managers and funders.
For more information about Scopus, visit
elsevier.com/scopus.
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