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Scopus guide

Scopus is a multidisciplinary database and so useful for most researchers. this guide will show you how to use it to find the information you are looking for.

Additional search results

The default results shown from your search will be Documents. However, there are other tabs if you want to explore extra options. 

  • Preprints - these are preliminary, unpublished, non-peer-reviewed versions of scholarly papers that precede publication. Scopus has over two million preprints from 2017 onwards from the following repositories: arXiv, ChemRxiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, SSRN, TechRxiv and Research Square.
  • Patents - The results from patents. Scopus includes 49 million patents from five major patent offices (WIPO, EPO, USPTO, JPO, UK IPO)
  • Secondary documents - these are references that are not indexed in Scopus. This could be because they were found in the references or citations of documents within the database, Scopus was unable to confirm the document because of incomplete or incorrect data or there was missing content. You will not be able to link through to the document but you may be able to find it via a search engine. 
  • Research data - links through to datasets in Mendeley DataSearch. Scopus says that "In addition to searching the description of research data, DataSearch queries the data itself, yielding the most relevant results."

Image showing 'Documents' results page for search terms "climate change" AND "Imperial College"