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Scopus LibGuide: Searching Scopus

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• Searching Scopus
• Author profile
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In Scopus, you can search by Documents, Authors or Organization. For details of the Author and Organization search please see the Author and Organization tabs.

Document search

Documents include journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, articles in press and data papers. Follow the steps below to learn how to perform a basic document search:

• By default, Scopus will search in the Article title, Abstract and Keywords of documents
• You can specify in which fields to search using the drop-down menu [2]
• Use the +Add search field [3]  option to add additional fields 
• Each new search field is combined using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT [4]
• Select Add date range [5] to either select a publication date range or to specify an "added to Scopus" date range
• To see a complete list of advanced field codes, select Advanced document search [6]
• Your Search History is displayed with the option to Set Alert [7] to notify you by email of new search results in Scopus that match that search
• Select More [8] to save an important query or to delete a query
• To combine queries from your history, choose two or more searches and select Combine queries [9]

Document results page

Editing your search, saving your search and setting alerts

• Saving your search and setting up alerts  [1]
• Quickly review or edit your search from the top of the page [2]
• By default, the search results are sorted by date. Use the ‘Sort by’ drop-down menu to sort in a different order. [3]

Refine your results [4]   From the left-hand menu, you can:

• Search within your results
• Author name
• Open Access type (learn more about the Open Access filter below)
• Subject area
• Publication stage
• Affiliation
• Funding sponsor

Registered users can sign in to:

• Save searches
• Set up alerts to be notified when new documents are added to Scopus that match this search
• Learn how to become a registered user

Export results

Export selected search results [5]   to various file types, reference managers and platforms : 

• RIS format (for import into EndNote

Analyze search results

Analyze Search Results button [6]

Use this feature to gain further insights into any list of document results.

Search Tips

Search Tips in Scopus

• loose phrase, use double quotation marks
• “heart attack” will search for documents where heart and attack appear together
• asterisk is a wildcard
• “criminal* insan*” finds criminally insane and criminal insanity. 
• exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces  { }

Note: {heart-attack} and {heart attack} return different results, as the first will search for results that contain a hyphen between heart and attack

• Discover more search tips in the Support Center A full guide to boolean and proximity operators, loose and exact phrases, special characters, and other search tips. 

Secondary documents

Scopus also features non-Scopus references, called ‘secondary documents’, which are not indexed in our database for three possible reasons:

• They are retrieved from the references or citations of the documents that are covered by Scopus
• Scopus is unable to match documents with certainty due to incomplete or incorrect data
• There is missing content

To view these non-Scopus references, click ‘S econdary documents ’ above your search results.

• Learn more about secondary documents

Cited reference search

Scopus provides the ability to search the list of cited references in articles, books, etc. If the reference which you are starting with is very relevant to your research, other related publications have probably cited references that are also relevant to your research. Cited reference searching is a useful extension to your standard keyword search.

• Learn how to perform a cited reference search

Open Access filters

Refine your results  [4]

On the document details page, you can filter by Open Access types,   including:

• All open access
• Gold: Documents that are in journals that only publish open access
• Hybrid Gold:  Documents that are in journals that provide authors the choice of publishing open access
• Bronze:  Published version of record or manuscript accepted for publication; the publisher has chosen to provide temporary or permanent free access
• Green:  Published version or manuscript accepted for publication, available at the repository
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• Last Updated: Apr 17, 2024 12:12 AM
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Introduction to Scopus

• About Scopus

What is Scopus?

Why use scopus.

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Get Help with Scopus

The Library offers workshops and appointments to introduce members of the Brandeis community to Scopus:

• Request a workshop  for a group of three or more
• Schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian one-on-one or as a pair

Scopus is a large database of peer-reviewed literature, including journals, books, and conference proceedings. Scopus is very similar to Web of Science and offers many of the same features.

This guide will introduce the major features of Scopus and will link to more in-depth tutorials. Ready to dive right in? Use the link below to access Scopus.

You can use Scopus for a variety of purposes, including:

• Search for papers, conference proceedings, and more by topic
• Search for authors and affiliations
• Set up alerts to notify you of new research

Citations & References

• View the references that are cited in one paper or a selection of papers
• View citing documents to see who has cited one paper or a selection of papers
• Identify trends in search results
• View research metrics for authors, papers, and journals
• Analyze references by institutional affiliation
• Next: Search >>
• Last Updated: Feb 5, 2024 1:39 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.brandeis.edu/scopusguide

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Searching Scopus: Using Scopus

Created by health science librarians.

About Scopus

Basic search, advanced search, author name search, citation searching, creating alerts, exporting items to citation managers, analyzing results, create bibliography.

• Comparison between Scopus and Web of Science
• Journal Metrics
• Helpful Resources and Tutorials

Scopus is an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and web sources with tools to track, analyze, and visualize research. Scopus provides access to a broad portfolio of peer-reviewed content from around the world. 

Scopus includes the records from the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases, among other included sources. Scopus uses four broad subject areas:  Physical Sciences , Health Sciences , Social Sciences, and Life Sciences . 

Scopus allows users to:

• Search for articles, conference proceedings,trade publications, and book chapters on a topic
• Find author information, such as H-index, and lists of publications
• Locate Impact metrics for a journal title using SNIP, SJR, and CiteScore
• Perform citation searches on known articles
• Identify promising journals in which to publish
• Match an organization with its research output
• Locate potential collaborators or subject experts
• Manage your impact with your ORCID ID
• Set Citation Alerts

Search Form

Below is the Scopus search screen. Enter your first search term into the search field. If you have more than one concept to your search, select "Add Search Field" to add additional search fields, or conduct separate searches and combine them later using the "Search" button. 

Scopus does NOT have MeSH terms  or other subject headings on which to search. 

Scopus defaults to searching an article's Title, Abstract and Keywords.  You can change this in Advanced (see the tab to the left for information on Advanced searching).

Adapted from Rush University Library's  "Scopus User Guide"

On the Advanced search form, you can create a search using field codes, proximity operators, or boolean operators to narrow the scope of the search.

To create an advanced search, Click "Advanced Search" from the main search page

To search for keywords in an article's title or abstract, type in  TITLE-ABS before your search terms.  Be sure to use parentheses!  For example, this is correct:  (TITLE-ABS( children OR pediatrics))   but this is not correct:  TITLE-ABS children OR pediatrics

When doing a Boolean search, Scopus insists that parentheses be used correctly.  If you get a message about a Syntax Error, check your (( )).

Scopus needs Boolean operators (AND, OR) to be capitalized.  To exclude in Scopus, you must use AND NOT (not just 'NOT').

Scopus is a great place to look for information about a particular author's published works.    You can start your search for information on Scopus's main search page by clicking "Authors."  While Scopus is a compilation of peer-reviewed articles, it is not comprehensive, so keep in mind that you will only see information about the articles that have been indexed into Scopus.

Type in the author's last name, and first name if it will be helpful to locate them.  It is often a good idea to put an Affiliation as well.

The author's information will appear.  To see all their published work that has been indexed into Scopus, click the box in front of their name and then click "Show documents."

If you are checking on your own citations and notice that you have more than one listing, click "Request to merge authors."

If this is your information and there are multiple BOXES for your name, you can merge them by clicking the "Request to merge authors" link and following the steps.

For a visual representation of this author's work, click the box for All, then "View citation information."

• Scopus Advanced Search Video Tutorial

To find citation counts in Scopus

• Go to the  Scopus database
• Search by the document's title
• In the results list, look in the far-right hand column for the citation count.
• To see what documents cited the document, click on the citation count.

By registering as a Scopus user, you are able to create search, document, and author alert s to stay up-to-date at your desired frequency. Use these alerts to receive email notices when new documents are loaded on Scopus. From the Alerts page, you can create alerts, view the latest results for an alert, edit alerts, and delete alerts. There is no limit on the number of alerts you can create.

A Search alert is a saved search that you can schedule to run at certain intervals. If any new results are found, you will receive an email with the first 25 results and a link into Scopus to access all new results. You must be logged in to set an alert or work with your saved alerts.

To set a new search alert:

• From the  D ocument Search page, perform a new search. The Search results page opens.
• From the search results page, click  Set alert . The Set Alert pop-up appears.
• Set the frequency and day of week to start alerts.

To set an author alert:

• From the Author page, perform a new search. The Search results page opens.
• From the search results page, click an author's name. The author details page opens.
• From the author details page, click  Get citation alerts . The Set Alert Author Citation Alert pop-up opens.

To set a document alert:

• From the Document search page, perform a new search. The Search results page opens.
• From the search results page, click an document's name. The Document details page opens.
• From the Document details page, click  Set citation alerts . The Set Document Citation Alert pop-up opens.

To export items to SciWheel, EndNote, Zotero, or another citation manager, look in the grey bar (found at the top of your search results) for the words "RIS Export."   Note that you can also email citations (with links) to yourself in this bar.

You can export or email individual citations using the links in this bar, or you can save citations into a List and export/email the entire list at once by using the List function.  See "Saving Items in a List" in the tabs to the left for more information. 

The drop-down arrow next to "RIS Export" provides options for what information you'd like to export.  We recommend checking of all boxes so that all information is sent.

>Analyze Search Results

Scopus offers several built-in functions for analyzing search results.  You can find these options here:

The analysis tools provide a summary view of aspects of the search results, such as counts of publications:

• By document source (ex. Journal Title)
• By affiliation (author organization)
• By document type (ie. journal article, book chapter, etc.)
• And several other criterion

With Scopus, you can create a bibliography of articles on the fly. 

1. Select the articles in your search set that you would like to include in your bibliography. You can do this by checking off the boxes of the articles you want, or by using the "add to list" feature to just add those articles you want. When you add the articles to the list, your list will open. From there, select all. 

2.  Click on the three dots at the top right that indicate "more menu options".  Select the option "Create Bibliography".

3. Select which format you want (HTML or text) and select the appropriate citation style. Click on "Create Bibliography".

• Next: Comparison between Scopus and Web of Science >>
• Last Updated: Mar 19, 2024 8:05 AM
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Table of Contents

Database information: scopus, searching scopus.

• Accessing Full Text
• Exporting Results from Scopus

Saving Results/Personal Account in Scopus

Auto alerts in scopus, scopus tutorials.

Scopus and Manifold

Scopus is an extensive abstract and citation database that provides comprehensive coverage of peer-reviewed journals, books, conference abstracts, and patents across the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Using Scopus, you can:

Create customized searches for peer-reviewed literature across many disciplines

• View citations to journal articles
• Access the full text of documents provided by subscriptions through the University Libraries
• View profiles for authors indexed by Scopus, which include measures of scholarly impact like h-index and publication counts

This wealth of available data makes Scopus useful for searching for literature that can help you with your research and determining the impact of scholarly works. 

Searching in Scopus

You can search Scopus for documents, authors, and affiliations, as well as create advanced searches customized to your needs.

Searching for documents On the Scopus home page, you can search for documents based on search terms provided in article titles, keywords, publication names, and many other facets. To begin, enter your search terms in the field provided and use the dropdown box to specify which fields to search.   

You can repeat this process to include additional search terms in different fields. You also have the option to specify date range, document type, and subject areas for the returned results. When you complete your search, the results are presented in a list as shown below.

From this view, you can sort results, refine the results, export and download records, and access complete records for publications. Clicking on a result title opens the full Scopus record for the publication. To access the full text of a record, you can click the Full Text Options to get to the Find It or View at Publisher buttons.

Searching for authors To search for authors, click the Author search tab above the search box. 

Here you can search for authors and documents they have published based on name, keyword, and even ORCID . 

You can also narrow your search by exact matches only or by limiting results to specified subject areas. Each author returned in the results list links to a page that profiles their publications and citations as well as provides measures of their scholarly impact.

Searching for affiliations To search for affiliations (i.e., institutions), click the Affiliation search tab above the search box. 

Here, you can search by institution name, such as University of Minnesota.

Results from this search link to affiliation profiles that provide access to documents and authors associated with the respective institution. In addition, these profiles provide some statistics of an affiliation’s scholarly output, including documents by subject area, documents by publication source, and collaborating institutions.

Creating advanced searches Scopus provides the option of creating advanced searches to customize the results that are returned. To do this, click the Advanced search tab above the search box. 

In this page, you are provided a text box where you can specify all the parameters of your search using the field codes listed.

Getting full text

When using Library resources, the FindIt link is your connection to accessing the full text of articles if a PDF link is not already visible.

This short video will show you how to get to the articles you need for your research paper or other University of Minnesota assignments. Never pay for articles! If we don't have it online, request it and we will get it for you. 

Exporting Results From Scopus

Scopus allows you to export results lists (including all search results, ‘My Lists’ and ‘Saved Lists’), documents and documents references. These can be exported either to a file or a reference management tool (e.g. EndNote, Zotero).

• Select the document or documents you would like to export .
• Click the ‘ Export ’ link. A list of file or reference management tools will appear. 
• If this is the first time you are exporting , select your reference management tool or file type.
• Once you choose your file type or reference management tool, an export options box will appear.  Choose what citation information you want to export.  You can also save this template as a preference. Then click Export.
• Your export begins.

Personal account

You can create an Elsevier account for free.   With an Elsevier account you can save a search from any documents results list, or from within your current search history.

• Run a document search or an advanced search . A document search results page opens.
• From your document search results, click ‘ Save search’ which appears to the left of your search results. The "Save this search" popup opens.
• From within the Save this search popup, enter a name for the new Saved search .
• Click ‘ Save ’. Your search is saved and can be accessed by clicking on the Saved Searches link located above the Search History.

If you are not signed into Scopus, you have the option to add selected documents from your results list to a temporary session-based list.   When you sign out of Scopus, the documents in your temporary list are deleted.  If you are signed into Scopus, you have the option to save documents to a list which may be accessed anytime you are signed into Scopus.  You can rename, edit, delete, add documents to, or export your lists of documents in Scopus account. These lists are available any time when you sign in to Scopus and can be modified or exported according to your research needs.

You can setup and manage alerts in Scopus

• From the Set search alert page or Set Alert pop-up, enter a ‘Name of alert’ .
• In ‘ E-mail address’ , enter the email address for alert notifications. This field automatically displays the email address entered when you first registered to use Scopus. You can also enter email addresses of colleagues. Separate multiple email addresses with a semicolon, comma, or space, or press ‘ Enter’ on your keyboard. If a colleague unsubscribes from the alert, you will receive an email informing you of the action.
• From ‘ Frequency’ , select how often you want to receive alert email notices. For weekly alerts you can choose which day of the week you receive the alert, and for monthly alerts you can choose which day you receive the alert. Note: If there are no new documents matching your alert criteria during the time-frame or frequency you choose, you will not receive an alert.
• Click on "set search alert" to save the alert.
• Once you have created your Alert, it can be accessed on the Alert page.  On that page you can select ‘ Active’ or ‘ Inactive’ as the status of your alert. You can change this setting on the Alerts page without losing your frequency preferences. Setting an alert to ‘ Inactive’ status does not delete the alert.

Scopus Tutorials : Scopus tutorials provide a visual tour of Scopus and its functions, but are without sound. The tutorials below are also found in the relevant FAQs in the Scopus Support Center.

Scopus Tutorial: How to conduct a basic search (2022 July 12): 3:10 min

Scopus Tutorial: How to use advanced search (2022 July 13): 3:04 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to Expand Your Search (2022 July 13): 2:32 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to Create Citation Overview (2022 July 22): 2:48 min

Scopus Tutorial: Understand how author profiles work (2022 July 21): 2:14 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to save searches and set alerts (2022 July 13): 2:13 min.

Scopus is useful for learning and research. Beyond serving as simply a citation index, however, it is also useful for assessing scholarly impact. As a result, data from Scopus form the foundation for Manifold , one of the University's research impact tracking systems.

What is Manifold? Manifold is a web-accessible interface that generates profiles and reports of research impact and scholarly output for faculty and departments in the University of Minnesota Medical School. Built in response to emerging expectations and needs around faculty scholarship, Manifold harvests publication data from Scopus, including citation counts, to provide metrics of research impact and productivity for Medical School faculty and departments. In addition, Manifold provides an easy mechanism for identifying nominees for the Wall of Scholarship , which showcases research excellence among Medical School faculty. As more needs around assessment emerge at the University, the system continues to be enhanced to meet new demands on the data that Scopus provides on faculty scholarship.

For more information about Manifold, please consult the Manifold Frequently Asked Questions page.

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The Bibliometric Literature on Scopus and WoS: The Medicine and Environmental Sciences Categories as Case of Study

Mila cascajares.

1 Department of Engineering, University of Almeria, ceiA3, 04120 Almeria, Spain; se.lau@sacalim (M.C.); se.lau@edyaclaa (A.A.); se.lau@onaznamf (F.M.-A.)

Alfredo Alcayde

Esther salmerón-manzano.

2 Faculty of Law, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Av. de la Paz, 137, 26006 Logroño, Spain

Francisco Manzano-Agugliaro

Associated data.

Data retrieved from Scopus, SciVal, WoS, Incites, JCR and SJR databases.

In a broad sense, science can be understood as the knowledge contained in scientific manuscripts published in scientific journals. Scientific databases index only those journals that reach certain quality standards. Therefore, research and dissemination of scientific knowledge are essential activities for the growth of science itself. The aim of this manuscript is to assess the situation of medicine and environmental sciences among the bibliometric literature and to put it in perspective with the overall bibliometric publications in all scientific fields. The main countries publishing bibliometric manuscripts are China, USA and Spain. The latter country is ranked three out of the top five institutions according to the Scopus and WoS databases. In both databases, the average scientific collaboration of the top 20 institutions offers the same result, 41%. According to Scopus, the main subject categories in which this research falls are social sciences (38%), computer science (26%) and medicine (23%), while the environmental sciences category has 8%. In the analysis of the Medicine category alone, it has been observed that 136 countries have contributions in this field. The main countries are the United States, China and the United Kingdom. In the field of medicine, the main areas studied were: Epidemiology, Pediatrics, Orthopedics, Cardiology, Neurosurgery, Radiology, Ophthalmology, Oncology, Plastic Surgery and Psychiatry. With respect to environmental sciences, less international dissemination has been found, with only 83 countries having worked in this field. The main ones are China, Spain and the United States. Regarding the top 10 institutions, it can be stated that only Spain and China are relevant. Spain focuses on sustainability and China on the environment. The result of an independent keyword analysis of all published bibliometric manuscripts has shown that the main clusters are: Mapping Science (29%), Research Productivity (23%), Medicine (20%), Environmental Sciences (12%), Psychology (7%), Nursing (6%) and Engineering (4%). In short, medicine and environmental sciences are the most relevant areas in the field of bibliometrics after social sciences and computer sciences.

1. Introduction

Bibliometrics, as a science-related discipline, aims to provide a set of tools for the assessment of scientific production. From its origin at the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, bibliometric studies have focused on different points of view. In 1917 Cole and Eales carried out the first bibliometric study through the statistical analysis of publications on comparative anatomy [ 1 ], thus initiating the use of bibliometrics for the measurement of scientific activity. Following this same approach, in 1926 Lotka focused his work on analyzing the scientific production of researchers with the so-called Lotka’s Law of Productivity, a law that determines that the greatest number of authors publish the least number of publications, while the least number of authors publish the greatest number of publications [ 2 ]. In 1956, Price formulated the Law of Exponential Growth of Scientific Information, stating that it grows at a much faster rate than other social processes. Price also states that the scientific literature loses relevance more rapidly, although not in a uniform manner depending on the different disciplines. Thus, while in the experimental sciences and technology the growth in number of publications is greater and faster, their decline is more rapid, in contrast to the behavior found in the humanities and social sciences. Later, it was in 1963 when Price introduced a new element in the development of bibliometrics by relating the growth of science to scientific communication [ 3 ].

A second aspect of bibliometrics is oriented to the analysis of the publications’ references in the scientific literature. Thus, in 1927 Gross and Gross made the first count of references appearing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society to study the frequency of their appearance and the sources of their origin, applying the study to the selection of the list of subscriptions of interest [ 4 ]. In 1934 Bradford analyzed the distribution of articles in journals by formulating Bradford’s Law of Dispersion, according to which it was evident that a small number of journals accounted for the largest percentage of the bibliography of a specific topic [ 5 ]. If scientific journals are arranged in decreasing order of productivity of articles on a given subject, one can distinguish a core of journals more specialized in that subject and several groups containing approximately the same core but distributed in an increasing number of journals. It can be understood as the background of the classification of journals by scientific categories.

The third point of view focuses on the analysis of the impact and visibility of research through citation activity. As early as 1873 Shepard developed a citation index following the codification applied to federal court judgments in the United States. However, it was not until 1936 that Cason and Lubotky created for the first time a citation network, identifying the links between psychology journals [ 6 ]. However, undoubtedly, the precursor of citation analysis is Garfield, who published in 1955 in the Science journal the proposal for a citation index [ 7 ], based on Sherpad’s concept, which made it possible to relate an article to other articles citing it. In this way it was possible to assess the significance of a research paper and its impact, and for researchers to know how their publications were being used. This is the renowned Science Citation Index (SCI) created by Garfield himself from the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information). In the early 1960s, Garfield and Sher designed the Impact Factor.

The purpose of the Impact Factor was to be the methodological instrument for selecting the journals that belong to the Science Citation Index, since it was unfeasible to include all the existing scientific journals in it. Years later, in addition to the Science Citation Index (focused on Experimental and Technological Sciences), it created the Social Science Citation Index (oriented to the Social Sciences) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) for the Arts and Humanities. These three databases have been a milestone in bibliometrics and have become benchmarks in the evaluation of publications, researchers, and institutions. They are part of the Web of Science database platform, originally known as ISI Web of Knowledge and currently owned by Clarivate Analytics.

Although they have been the main benchmark since the 1960s, based also on the relationship that Garfield established in 1979 between the nature of the research and its potential to be cited, they have nevertheless been the focus of multiple criticisms [ 8 ]. Earlier in 1976 Pinski and Narin warned of the bias in favor of reviews, which tend to have a higher impact factor and in the calculation of the impact factor all citations are weighted equally [ 9 ]. To correct this deviation, they suggest the “influence methodology”, giving each journal a weight regardless of its size. As early as 1986 Tomer thought that “There is no distinction in regard to the nature and merits of the citing journals” [ 10 ]. These disagreements have been ongoing for a long time, and they are still relevant today.

For example, in 2001 Tijssen, Visser and Van Leeuwen questioned citation analysis as a measure of research quality since the influence of citation varies in different disciplines, showing considerable differences [ 11 ]. Today, shortcomings such as asymmetry between numerator and denominator, differences between disciplines, insufficient citation window and asymmetry of underlying citation distributions has also been analyzed by Larivière and Sugimoto in 2019 [ 12 ].

The JCR Impact Factor (SCI, SSCI) is not the only metric that measures the impact factor. The SJR (Scimago Journal Rank), shows the visibility of the journals contained in Scopus since 1996. This metric applies not only to journals, but also to book series and conference proceedings. Based on citations, it shows the quality and reputation of the journal in thematic fields, computing the citations received to articles of a journal for a period of three years, giving a greater weight to citations coming from high reputed journals. The SJR index attempts to correct for these deviations by weighting links based on citation proximity, extending the number of years considered in the citation and setting thresholds for self-citation within the journal itself [ 13 ].

By the end of 2016 [ 14 ], Scopus establishes a new metric index, the CiteScore, which extends the range of citation years (4 years), but by including all types of documents; on the one hand, it eliminates the differences between the different types of documents, although on the other hand some critics state that this index benefits Elsevier publications, which tend to publish a lower proportion of articles than other publishers [ 15 ].

Additionally, as a last novelty, there is the transition of the impact factor computation with respect to the date of online publication and not the date of print publication, as until now. In the current system, there are journals that have up to more than a year to publish the article online so that it can obtain citations, and when it is published in print, its number of citations is higher than those of other journals. Therefore, there is a trend towards a model in which the online publication date will be considered for the computation of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) [ 16 ].

This change implies a problem for databases that do not have an online publication date. Web of Science Core Collection has begun to index online-first articles since December 2017 [ 17 ]. For example, in the case of Web of Science, half of the journals indexed lack this data [ 16 ]. If a publication is published online in the same year as in print, there is no mismatch since the JIF is from the same year. This is not the case for journals published online in one year and in print in another. Clarivate is considering the effects of adopting two new counting models: one pre-2020 and one post-2020 [ 18 ].

Thus far, bibliometrics has progressed from its origins to the present day. At present, there is a significant increase in the number of publications on this discipline, closely linked to the exponential growth of science. This trend has been classified into three major approaches [ 19 ]:

• Bibliometric performance studies on authorship and production: they focus on analyzing the profiles of authors according to elements such as their affiliation, country, and the production of articles, examining which are the most cited or relevant;
• Bibliometric studies on topics: they focus on the main topics dealt with, as well as their relationships or evolution in a specific topic;
• Studies on research methodologies: they focus on the research methods and techniques used to develop the research papers published in the journals.

Taking all these approaches into account, how can bibliometrics be defined? From a quantitative point of view Pritchard in 1969 describes it as “studies aimed at quantifying the processes of written communication” [ 20 ]. In 1987, Broadus defined bibliometrics as the “branch of research concerned with the quantification of the physical units of publications, bibliographic citations and their surrogates” [ 21 ]. A broader concept is included here since it establishes relationships between publications and bibliographic links or co-citation. Moed in 1989 defines it as the “discipline that deals with the collection, processing and management of bibliographic data from the scientific literature” [ 22 ]. From this second point of view, bibliometrics has been defined as a tool for analysis and evaluation. In 1989 White and McCain defined it as “the quantitative study of publications as reflected in the literature, in order to provide evolutionary models of science, technology and research” [ 23 ]. Spinak in 1996 refers to bibliometrics as the study of the organization of scientific and technological sectors from bibliographic sources and patents, to identify authors, their relationships and trends [ 24 ]. In the same line, other authors describe bibliometrics as the discipline that tries to measure scientific and social activity and predict its trend by analyzing the literature [ 25 ].

Other concepts related to bibliometrics are scientometric or infometric. Scientometric applies bibliometric techniques to science and examines scientific development and policies. Infometric is more focused on quantitative aspects of measurement and the application of mathematical models.

Bibliometrics and bibliometric indexes form a whole that serve to assess and measure scientific production in all its aspects. To measure, it is necessary to evaluate a set of data that are collected in databases specialized in giving visibility to scientific publications. A bibliometric index is a parameter that measures some aspect of scientific activity and allows for assessing the impact of research in the different fields of science. The two databases that allow this analysis are Web of Science and Scopus, both with a clearly commercial bias. Based on these two databases, both Clarivate and Elsevier have developed applications that allow organizations to assess their research from different perspectives to be able to establish and evaluate strategies based on reliable data.

InCites [ 26 ] uses data from the Web of Science Core Collection since 1980 to facilitate the analysis of organizations: activity, impact, collaborations, allowing to make comparisons. It allows searching by researchers or research groups to analyze their production. The search by areas of knowledge gives an overview of emerging fields. It is also possible to analyze the journals in which they are published and the funding agencies. All these variables (affiliation, researcher, area, source of publication, funding) can be easily combined to perform analyses by applying and combining different metrics (productivity, impact, collaboration, open access) and generate all kinds of reports. As a novelty, since December 2020, InCites allows the analysis of topics, classifying them into macro, meso and micro topics thanks to the collaboration between ISI and Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) and the use of the algorithm developed by CWTS that allows to detect and connect communities [ 27 ].

Based on the analysis of data from Scopus [ 28 ], Scival offers access to more than 50 million publication records (post-1996) from over 22,000 journals from more than 5000 publishers worldwide. It analyzes the scientific output of more than 230 countries and 14,000 institutions allowing to visualize research performance, make comparisons, analyze trends, and evaluate collaborations. It also allows the analysis of topics, classifying them into topic name and topic cluster. As InCites, Scival allows to generate data analysis and visualization reports combining many metrics that assess economic impact, productivity, citation impact, usage, collaborations and communication.

There are a large number of bibliometric metrics that allow the evaluation of scientific activity, but it is important to use these metrics correctly. It is necessary to consider what is to be measured, apply the appropriate metric, detect possible deviations, make an adequate analysis, etc. In this regard the 2015 Leiden Manifesto sets out 10 basic principles that the use of metrics should not be forgotten [ 29 ], and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment sets out 18 recommendations in the same direction [ 30 ].

The first goal of this research is to analyze the context of all the bibliometric studies carried out from 1996 to 2020 to discover if there is any bias towards any scientific category, if there are countries or institutions that devote a great effort to this issue and finally to analyze what consideration these works have, e.g., are they mostly considered as reviews or articles, and what level of citations they have in comparison according to the categories in which they are indexed. As a second main goal, it is the case study of the categories of medicine and environmental sciences.

2. Materials and Methods

This analysis was based on searches of the Scopus and Web of Science databases. A previous study has pointed out that WoS is a confusing concept, as many institutions may subscribe to only a customized subset of the entire Web of Science Core Collection. It should be made clarified that our study is conducted for the whole of WoS [ 31 ]. Although the historical content of Scopus dates to 1788, the search was limited from 1996 (when the analysis of Scopus data in SciVal began) to 2020. In the case of Web of Science, the origin of the data collected in this database begins in 1960 and the analyses in InCites begin in 1980. In order to carry a correlation in the results presented in this work, it has also been limited from 1996 to 2020.

The search was performed using the same criteria: the term “bibliometric” in the title of the publication and in the keywords assigned by the author. The results of both searches were exported from Scopus to SciVal Benchmarking and from WoS to InCites Analyze.

Data processing, both from Scopus and WoS and from SciVal and InCites, was carried out with different tools. The Scopus API was used for automatic data retrieval [ 32 ], Microsoft Excel, Gephi and ArcGIS for the analysis and representation of the results, see Figure 1 .

Methodology.

Topic classification is done on the document [ 33 ]. A topic in SciVal covers a collection of documents with a common intellectual interest [ 34 ]. Over time, new topics appear and, as topics are dynamic, they evolve. Each document is assigned a topic consisting of three elements, for example: Intellectual Structure, Co-citation Analysis, scientometrics. The topics are based on the citation network grouping of 95% of the Scopus content (all documents published since 1996), taking as a reference the direct analysis of citations using the reference lists of the documents. As new published documents are indexed, they are added to Topics using their reference lists. This makes the Topics dynamic and most increase in size over time. New topics represent research areas that have experienced a significant acceleration of growth in recently published articles and have attracted funding. These new Topics are derived from the existing stem Topics and are formed by the new citation relationships that have occurred in the last year. Once a year, the Topics SciVal algorithm is run to identify the new Topics that have emerged [ 35 ].

Like SciVal Topics, the InCites Topics ranking is also done on the document. It is based on a CWTS algorithm [ 27 ] considering the citations (cited and citing) between documents, based on the “strength” of the citation relationships. In this way, clusters are created: macro, meso and micro topics.

An independent analysis, based on scientific communities or clusters and the relationships between them based on citation and main keywords, has also been considered in this research.

Finally, continuing with the issue of quality, the sources (journals) have been analyzed with the following metrics:

• Number of publications in WoS and Scopus;
• Number of citations in WoS and Scopus;
• Quartile in JCR and SJR;
• Journal Impact Factor JCR. It uses for the citations, articles, reviews, and proceedings papers [ 36 ];
• 5-Year Journal Impact Factor JCR, available from 2007 onward [ 36 ];
• Impact SJR [ 37 ];
• Cite Score [ 35 ].

On the other hand, the analysis of the sources has been completed with two other metric values:

• Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) the SciVal [ 38 ];
• Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) the InCites [ 36 ].

3. Results of Bibliometric Literature on Scopus and WoS

3.1. trend in scientific production.

According to Scopus, with the search criteria used, between 1996 and 2020, 13,161 results were obtained. The temporal evolution is shown in Figure 2 from the year 2000, since before that date there are few papers per year. The trend line has been represented, showing that the annual growth is exponential. It can be observed that in 2020 there will be more than 2500 published documents.

Bibliometric publications trend (Source Scopus).

Figure 2 shows that 72% of the documents are mainly classified as articles. To a lesser extent, reviews in 13% of the cases and contributions to conferences in 10%. The number of reviews shows that this type of documents is the result of an analysis of a specific topic. In this case the most cited article [ 39 ] has considerably more citations than the most cited review [ 40 ].

In Web of Science (WoS), with the same search criteria, 11,651 results were obtained between 1996 and 2020, slightly less than in Scopus. The temporal evolution is shown in Figure 3 from the year 2000, since before that date there are few papers per year, as was the case in the other database. The trend line has been plotted, showing that annual growth is exponential. It can be observed that in the year 2020 there will be more than 2000 published documents.

Bibliometric publications trend (Source WoS).

Figure 3 shows that 68% of the works are classified as articles. To a lesser extent, reviews in 14% of the cases and contributions to congresses in 11%. In general, there are no differences between the two databases in the distribution of documents by type. In this case the most cited article and review are the same as in Scopus.

3.1.1. Countries

The countries that have devoted most effort to bibliometric studies are China with 16% of the total number of publications, followed by the USA with 15% and in third place Spain with 12.5%. Further behind with 6% are Brazil, the UK and India. Given that China and the USA are the world leaders in scientific production, these results in the first two positions are not surprising. It should be noted that a recent study has shown that China has overtaken the United States in terms of the number of articles indexed in the SCI in 2018 [ 41 ]. However, what is particularly notable is the great effort made by Spain in this area. Figure 4 shows a worldwide map with the geographical distribution by countries according to their publications related to bibliometrics.

Worldwide distribution by country of scientific production on bibliometrics.

The most cited bibliometric document from China is related to energy [ 42 ]. For the USA, it is the one cited above as the most cited review, and it is about economics [ 40 ], the same subject line as for the most cited from Spain [ 43 ].

3.1.2. Institutions According to Scopus and WoS

Table 1 shows the top 20 institutions that publish the largest number of bibliometric publications, according to Scopus and WoS. A first analysis of the table shows that the difference between the two databases is only in four institutions. The institutions that appear in Scopus in the top 20 and are not in WoS are: An-Najah National University (18), Sichuan University (16), Universidad de Chile (14) and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (19). On the other hand, the four institutions that appear in WoS and not in Scopus are: Harvard University (16), University System of Georgia (13), University of London (8) and Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica Antonio Ruberti (IASI-CNR) (17).

Main affiliations according to Scopus and WoS.

N TOT = Total number of publications; N IC = number publications with international collaboration.

These differences are undoubtedly due to the different sources indexed in the two databases. Of the differences in this top 20, there is only one institution in the top 10 of WoS and not in Scopus, the University of London. It can be seen that the first five institutions are the same in both databases, although in different order: Universidad de Granada (Spain), University of Valencia (Spain), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spain), Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) and Leiden University (Netherlands). It is remarkable that three institutions from Spain are in the top five, and this probably contributes, as already mentioned, to the fact that Spain accounts for 12.5% of the total number of publications in this field.

The most cited documents from these institutions were: University of Granada (Spain), related to computers and education [ 44 ]; University of Valencia (Spain), related to economics [ 45 ]; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spain), related to bibliometrics [ 46 ]; Chinese Academy of Sciences (China), related to biodiversity and conservation [ 47 ]; and Leiden University (Netherlands), related to bibliometry, the one already reported as the most cited bibliometric article [ 39 ].

Leiden University is a benchmark in research evaluation and bibliometric studies through the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS). It works closely with Clarivate Analytics, which bases its analyses on Web of Science and is continuously expanding its data system to include other sources, such as Scopus, PubMed, Crossref, PATSTAT, Mendeley and ORCID [ 48 ].

International collaborations (IC) were analyzed for both Scopus publications using SciVal and WoS publications using InCites, see Table 1 . For Scopus data, the minimum international collaboration for the top 20 is 15.8% for the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), while the maximum is 81% for the Universidad de Chile. For WoS data, the minimum of international collaboration in this top 20 is 10% from Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica Antonio Ruberti (IASI-CNR); while the maximum is 79.5% from Georgia Institute of Technology. However, both databases, for the average scientific collaboration of this top 20 offer the same result, 41.4% according to Scopus and 41% according to WoS. The first five institutions have relatively low international scientific collaboration in this field, between 21 and 38%. However, if we analyze the average of these five institutions, it is 29.8% according to Scopus and 29.9% according to WoS. Therefore, it is possible to establish that the main institutions dedicated to bibliometrics collaborate less than the average of the other 15, which without them have an average of 45% of international collaboration in both databases.

3.2. Scientific Areas of Indexing

3.2.1. scopus, subject area.

Figure 5 shows the indexation by subject area in Scopus. The Social Sciences category leads the published documents with slightly more than 38% of the publications, which was to be expected since this is where bibliometrics is classified. In second place is the Computer Science category with 26.5%, showing that there is an increasingly important volume of data management and that therefore advanced computer techniques must be applied. The third category in order of number of documents is the field of Medicine with more than 23%, this is worth a reflection on the importance of bibliometrics. The next three categories are close to 10% and are: Business, Management and Accounting (12%), Engineering (9%) and Environmental Science (8%).

Subject area in Scopus and its trend from 2000 to 2020.

Figure 5 shows the temporal evolution by years of the first six categories from 2000 to 2020 according to Scopus. Since 2008, bibliometric publications have been led by the Social Sciences category. The Computer Science category has occupied the second place from 2009 to 2019, and already in the last year it is surpassed by the Medicine category, which was in third place since 2009. The next three categories have had a quite similar behavior, exceeding 100 publications per year the Business, Management and Accounting category in 2016, Engineering in 2017 and Environmental Science in 2018, all of them finish with 300 or more papers per year in the last year studied, 2020.

According to SciVal, the average number of citations per document was 12.4. This section starts to discuss the Topic Name extracted from Scival, see Table 2 . It is observed that the main topic name is Hirsch Index, Self-Citation, Journal Impact Factor; followed closely by: Intellectual Structure, Co-citation Analysis, scientometrics. In third place is: Co-Authorship, Scientific Collaboration, scientometrics.

Topic Name (Scival) for bibliometrics publications.

N = Total number of publications; C = total number of citations; C/D = cites per document.

Since the Hirsch Index or H index was proposed in 2005 [ 49 ], many evaluation agencies and even journals make use of it to measure the quality of an individual author’s impact. This has also given rise to the misconduct by some authors of self-citation to artificially raise their own H index [ 50 ]. There are studies that propose eliminating self-citation for the calculation or correction of the H index [ 51 ]. Self-citations do not only occur in individual authors, but some journals have been able to encourage this practice in citing articles from their own journal to raise its Journal Impact Factor [ 52 ], this is named journal self-citation. These facts have inspired many studies that make this Topic Name the most prominent one to date.

In the second topic name, these studies are based on describing the intellectual structure of a particular scientific field from the point of view of frequently occurring keywords and phrases, using Co-citation Analysis, co-word analysis, hierarchical clustering, and link analysis [ 53 ]. The third of the main topic name focuses on the analysis of the structure of scientific collaboration networks [ 54 ]. These scientific collaboration networks are analyzed by scientific fields [ 55 ], countries [ 56 , 57 ] or even institutions [ 58 , 59 , 60 ].

Table 2 lists each topic name according to the average number of citations received per document. According to this index, the leading topic name is Social Science and Humanities, Research Evaluation, Book Publishers with almost 45 citations per document, followed in second place by Technology Roadmapping, Patent Analysis, Technological Competitiveness with almost 23, and in third place by Bibliometric Analysis, Citation Index, Document Type with almost 19.

Table 3 shows the main topic clusters related to bibliometric studies. The main topic cluster is the one focused on: Publications, Periodicals as Topic, Research. This cluster stands out from the rest as it is 11 times larger than the next cluster, which is focused on: Industry, Innovation, Entrepreneurship; and 30 times larger than the third: Library, Librarian, Information. In relation to the citations of each topic cluster name, Decision Making, Fuzzy Sets, Models leads this ranking with 23 citations per document, e.g., the manuscript “Fuzzy decision making: A bibliometric-based review” [ 61 ] has 163 citations according to Scopus. In second place is: Industry, Innovation, Entrepreneurship with 18 citations per document. In third place is Electricity, Energy, Economics with 16 citations per document, e.g., “Power quality: Scientific collaboration networks and research trends” [ 62 ].

Topic Cluster Name (Scival) for bibliometrics publications.

The classification by WoS categories is shown in Table 4 . As is well known, the categories do not match those of Scopus. On the other hand, in both databases the same document can be indexed in more than one category if the journal in which it was published is indexed in more than one category. For the documents analyzed, the great discrepancy between scientific fields between the two databases is observed in the field of Medicine in Scopus, which does not correspond to the first positions ranked by WoS. Although there are comparable categories in WoS such as: Medicine, Research and Experimental or Medicine, General and Internal, there are many other categories specific to the medical field that are independent for indexing. In our case, for example, the categories of: Oncology, Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Respiratory System, Ophthalmology, Dermatology or Tropical Medicine, but all of them with values below 1%, which does not make it possible to reach the 23.2% that appeared in Scopus. Therefore, the indexing field of medicine is very different between the two databases.

Indexing by category according to WoS.

N = Total number of publications; C/D = cites per document.

In the last column of Table 4 , the average number of citations of these bibliometric documents has been calculated according to WoS data. For the whole documents analyzed the average number of citations per document was 11.7. Only three categories are below five citations per document: Engineering, Electrical and Electronic, Computer Science, Theory and Methods and Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary. In general, these documents are highly cited within their scientific categories, especially in Management and Engineering, Industrial, both with more than 18 citations per document (C/D).

In this section the macro, meso and micro topics in which WoS classifies all bibliometric publications will be discussed. The macro topics are listed in Table 5 . Leading this classification are the social sciences which has 5 times more documents than the following one. Followed by Clinical and Life Sciences, and in third place is Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science, with far fewer documents.

Macro topics (InCites).

In terms of citations per document, social sciences remain the main one with 14. However, now the second place in this other ranking is for Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science with 12 citations per document. With 10 citations per document there are already several categories: Chemistry, and Engineering and Materials Science. The average number of citations per document (C/D) is 8.5.

The 20 main meso topics are listed in Table 6 , highlighting bibliometrics, scientometrics and Research Integrity, with 11 times more publications than the second meso topic, Management. These two meso topics can be included within the main macro topic of Social Science, mentioned above. As can be seen in column 2 of Table 6 , the first number indicates the macro topic. It can be observed that in this top 20 are not present the macro topics of: Chemistry (2), Earth Sciences (8), Engineering and Materials Science (7), Arts and Humanities (10), Physics (5) or Mathematics (9).

Meso topics (InCites).

The two meso topics with the most citations per document are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (19 C/D), Operations Research and Management Science (17 C/D), both from the macro topic 4, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science. The average number of citations per document for this top 20 meso topic is 11.7 C/D.

Finally, the micro topics, as expected, the first one, bibliometrics, belongs to the bibliometrics, scientometrics and Research Integrity meso topic, see Table 7 . Additionally, the second, Knowledge Management, and the fourth, Corporate Social Responsibility, belong to the Management meso topic. The third, Systematic Reviews, is included in the Medical Ethics meso topic. In the first 20 micro topics there is an average of 15 C/D. Fuzzy Sets stands out above all with more than 30 C/D and belongs to the meso topic with the highest average number of citations per document, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Micro topics (InCites).

3.3. Source (Journal)

Table 8 shows the top 20 journals indexed in both WoS and Scopus, and where the bibliometric articles are published. The table shows both the ranking of the journal by total number of publications in the subject studied and by citations received for these articles. In addition, the different impact indicators according to JCR, SJR and Scopus and the relative position of the journal within its category according to JCR and SJR, e.g., the quartile, are also shown.

Main indexes of WoS-JCR and Scopus-SJR bibliometric sources.

N 1 = Number of publications (WoS); Cit 1 = Number of citations (WoS); Q 1 = Quartile JCR (data 2019); IF 2 = Journal Impact Factor JCR (data 2019); IF 5 = 5-year Journal Impact Factor JCR (data 2019); N 2 = Number of publications (Scopus); Cit 2 = Number of citations (Scopus); Q 2 = Quartile SJR (data 2019); IF 3 = Impact SJR (data 2019); CS = Cite Score (data 2019).

The first consideration for journals is that they should have not the same number of articles published in the same period in both databases. What probably happens is that editorial articles or short communications are considered differently in both databases.

It is noted that apart from the journals indexed in the category of Information Science and Library Science, there are many of them in the categories of Environmental Sciences Environmental Studies such as: Sustainability , Journal of Cleaner Production , Environmental Science and Pollution Research . Or even Journals in the field of Medicine such as Medicine or World Neurosurgery .

Considering the quartile of the journals, it can be found that according to JCR: six are Q1, six are Q2, five are Q3, two are Q4 and one does not have a JCR impact factor. That is to say that most are Q1 and Q2. According to Scopus: seven are Q1, nine are Q2, one Q3 and three have no SJR. Of all these journals, the one with the highest impact both IF JCR and SJR is Journal of Informetrics .

A comparative study of the top 10 countries and affiliations publishing in the leading bibliometrics journal, Scientometrics , is shown in Table 9 . If the results obtained in Table 9 are compared with the global results of scientific production by country, it can be seen that the first three countries are the same and in the same ranking order: China, the United States, and Spain. Another four countries that appear in the top 10 of both rankings, although in a different order, are: United Kingdom, Germany, India and Italy. In summary there is an overlap of 7 of the 10 countries in both rankings. Although China and the USA are the two countries with the most publications, the Netherlands dominates in citations per document with 22 followed by Hungary with 19.

Top 10 countries and affiliations publishing in Scientometrics .

N = Number of publications (1978–2021); C = Number of citations (1978–2021); C/D = cites per document.

With regard to affiliations, something similar happens, since of the top 10 that publish the most in Scientometrics , 6 are in the top 20 worldwide. These are: Universidad de Granada, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Leiden University, Wuhan University and KU Leuven. In the case of the affiliations, i.e., the most productive ones are also the most cited in Scientometrics journal: KU Leuven (18 C/D), Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia (21 C/D) and Leiden University (35 C/D).

3.4. CNCI vs. FWCI

Table 10 shows the CNCI and FWCI. Both the CNCI and the FWCI measure the actual citation impact on the expected citation for the articles studied. As long as it is equal to or greater than 1, they have achieved the expected citation. There are only three journals that in both indicators, CNCI and FWCI, are below one: Current Science , Malaysian Journal of Library , and Information Science , and Revista Española de Documentación Científica . Then, there are two that have a CNCI < 1, although the FWCI is above 1: Sustainability , and Environmental Science and Pollution Research . All the other journals, 15 out of 20, are above 1 in both indicators, so in general the bibliometric articles achieve a higher number of citations than expected based on the journal and category.

CNCI (Category Normalized Citation Impact) from InCites and FWCI (Field-Weighted Citation Impact) from SciVal.

Considering the number of citations per document, for Incites the average is 15.5, and for Scival it is 14.8, so that for this select group of journals the average is about 15. The three journals with the most citations per document according to Incites are: Research Policy (62 C/D), Technological Forecasting and Social Change (31.7 C/D) and Journal of Informetrics (28 C/D). The lowest one for Incites is Investigación Bibliotecológica (0.9 C/D). The three journals with the most citations per document according to Scival are: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (48.4 C/D), Technological Forecasting and Social Change (42.9 C/D) and Journal of Informetrics (37 C/D). The lowest one for Scival is Espacios (0.7 C/D).

Figure 6 shows the journals studied in Table 11 , where the size of the dot is the number of articles studied. Both indicators, FCWI and CNCI, have been plotted, here two trends have been observed. The first one involving the largest number of journals is slightly favored by the FWCI. The second trend, which favors CNCI over FWCI, occurs in the journals: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology , Research Evaluation , Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology , World Neurosurgery , and Revista Española de Documentación Científica .

CNCI vs. FWCI for the top 20 journals.

Top 10 countries and affiliations publishing in Medicine category.

4. The Medicine and Environmental Sciences Categories as Case of Study

Once all the bibliometric manuscripts have been analyzed, it has been observed that the two main categories are those that could be classified as natural for bibliometrics, the social sciences and computer sciences. After these, the third category has been found to be medicine, and the other emerging category is environmental sciences. These two categories are therefore worth studying as a case study, which is the second objective of this manuscript.

4.1. The Medicine Category

4.1.1. countries and affiliations.

Figure 7 shows a worldwide map with the distribution by country of bibliometric publications in the medicine category. Publications from 136 different countries have been found. It can be seen that it covers geographically all the countries of the world.

Global distribution of bibliometric publications by country in the medicine category.

Table 11 shows the top 10 countries and affiliations publishing on bibliometrics in the category of medicine. They have been analyzed from 2000 to 2020 and based on the Scopus database.

In terms of countries, this ranking is led by the USA with more than twice more publications than the next country, China. It should be noted that the most cited article from the USA in this category is on the history and meaning of the impact factor, even though it is published in a medical journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) [ 63 ]. Although the second most cited manuscript from this country is on the effectiveness of interventions, whose results are subsequently contradicted [ 64 ].

In third place is the UK where its most cited manuscript is related to a taxonomy of behavior change techniques used in interventions [ 65 ]. For the fourth country, Spain, the most cited manuscript can also be considered a bibliometric research paper related exclusively to medicine, the Spanish version of the Short Form 36 Health Survey [ 66 ].

Among the top 10 affiliations that have published bibliometric manuscripts in the category of medicine, there are three from Spain, University of Valencia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche; and the other three from Canada: University of Toronto, McMaster University and The University of British Columbia. The two most cited manuscripts from the University of Valencia focus on bibliometric aspects of scientific collaborations [ 67 ], or the impact factors of medical journals [ 68 ] and the third most cited manuscript focuses on a purely medical topic with the leishmaniasis [ 69 ]. The most cited manuscript from the University of Toronto is a purely medical one, such as the propensity-score methods that are increasingly being used to reduce the impact of treatment-selection bias in the estimation of treatment effects using observational data [ 70 ].

4.1.2. Keywords

In this section the most frequent keywords in the fields of medicine that appear in the bibliometric publications in this category have been identified, see Table 12 . Among the scientific fields of medicine, Epidemiology and Pediatrics stand out above the rest. The main affiliations in these two fields are Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira (Colombia) and University of Valencia (Spain), respectively.

Top 10 medical keywords in bibliometric publications in this category and the main affiliations using them.

4.1.3. Journals

Table 13 shows the top 10 journals publishing articles in bibliometrics in the category of medicine and their main WoS-JCR and Scopus-SJR bibliometric source indices. It can be seen that the top three journals are above 80 manuscripts and stand out from the rest. Of these 10 JCR journals, three are Q1, three Q2, three Q3 and one has no impact factor. However, for SJR, five are Q1, four Q2 and one Q3.

Top 10 journals publishing articles on bibliometrics in the category of medicine and their main bibliometric source indices.

N 1 = Number of publications (Scopus); Q 1 = Quartile JCR (data 2019); IF 2 = Journal Impact Factor JCR (data 2019); IF 5 = 5-year Journal Impact Factor JCR (data 2019); Q 2 = Quartile SJR (data 2019); IF 3 = Impact SJR (data 2019); CS = Cite Score (data 2019).

4.2. The Environmental Sciences Category

4.2.1. countries and affiliations.

Figure 8 shows a world map with the country distribution of bibliometric publications in the environmental sciences category. Publications from 83 different countries have been found. It can be seen that it covers geographically a large part of the world, and that Africa is the continent with the fewest publications in this regard.

Global distribution of bibliometric publications by country in the environmental sciences category.

Table 14 shows the top 10 countries and affiliations publishing on bibliometrics in the category of Environmental Sciences. They have been analyzed from 2000 to 2020 and based on the Scopus database. By country, this ranking is led by China, with more than twice as many publications as the next country, Spain. Notably, the most cited article from China in this category is on sustainable, smart, resilient and low-carbon cities [ 71 ]. The second most cited manuscript from this country is on anaerobic digestion of food waste [ 72 ].

Top 10 countries and affiliations publishing in Environmental Sciences category.

Number two in this category, Spain, has its most cited article on sensitivity analysis in chemical modelling [ 73 ]. The following is on green innovation [ 74 ]. Number 3 in this category, USA, has its most cited article on urban resilience [ 75 ]. The following are on scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change [ 76 ]. Impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine life [ 77 ].

Among the top 12 affiliations that have published bibliometric manuscripts in the environmental sciences category, there are 10 from China and 2 from Spain. The top two affiliations are the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Almeria. The two most cited manuscripts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are related to global biodiversity [ 47 ] and, the other on ecological engineering and ecosystem restoration [ 78 ]. For the University of Almeria, the most cited manuscripts are related to and nitrate leaching [ 79 ] and energy efficiency in public buildings [ 80 ].

4.2.2. Keywords

In this section the most frequent keywords in the fields of environmental sciences that appear in the bibliometric publications in this category have been identified, Table 15 . Among the scientific fields of environmental sciences, sustainability and sustainable development keywords stand out above the rest. The two main affiliations for these top 10 keywords, are the University of Almeria (Spain) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China). The third main affiliation is the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and the environmental topic is related to public health.

Top 10 environmental sciences keywords in bibliometric publications in this category and the main affiliations using them.

4.2.3. Journals

Table 16 shows the top 10 journals publishing articles in bibliometrics in the category of environmental science and their main WoS-JCR and Scopus-SJR bibliometric source indices. It can be seen that the top journal is Sustainability with a large number of bibliometric manuscripts. The second and third journals are Journal Of Cleaner Production and International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health , respectively. Among these 10 JCR journals, four are Q1, three Q2, one Q3 and two have no impact factor. However, for SJR, five are Q1, three Q2 and two Q3.

Top 10 journals publishing articles on bibliometrics in the category of environmental sciences and their main bibliometric source indices.

5. Independent Cluster Analysis of Bibliometric Publications

In this section, all the papers have been classified by analysis of scientific communities or clusters, and their links between them, by means of the citations they make to each other. Afterwards, the most frequent keywords have been extracted from each of these scientific communities to name them, see Table 17 . Bibliometrics and Bibliometric Analysis are the search terms and excluded.

Main keywords of each cluster.

Figure 9 shows the graph generated with all the articles, where in the outer circle are documents not related to any other, or in other words, documents that do not cite any other bibliometric work, and therefore are in a certain way isolated from the core of the bibliometric publications. On the other hand, the central core are papers related by references, since they cite each other and thus establish a relationship. From this core of publications, seven communities or clusters have been detected, which are represented by colors in Figure 9 . In this figure, a particular paper has also been marked in red, which is the most cited article by all the bibliometric papers (Van Eck and Waltman, 2010).

Scientific communities of bibliometric publications.

The clusters have been outlined in Table 8 , where the 20 main keywords have also been collected. These clusters are: Science Mapping (28.72%), Research Productivity (23.29%), Medical research (19.65%), Environment (11.84%), Psychology (7.02%), Nursing (5.66%) and Engineering (3.82%).

Table 18 shows, for each cluster, the use of WoS or Scopus, being mainly highlighted in the Environment cluster. The only exception to this is in the Nursing cluster, where Scopus is preferred.

Main database used for each cluster.

6. Conclusions

This study has analyzed the bibliometric documents produced between 1996 and 2020. It has been observed how bibliometrics were applied to research in all scientific fields during these years. To evaluate these documents, a methodology has been used that has proven to be valid to relate scientific production in Scopus and WoS and link it to bibliometric indicators through SciVal and InCites.

The first conclusion drawn from this work is that there is an exponential growth in publications between 2000 and 2020 and that most of the documents are indexed as articles (72% in Scopus and 68% in WoS), as opposed to reviews (13% in Scopus and 14% in WoS). Three countries have led the number of documents published: China with 16%, the USA with 15% and in third place Spain with 12.5%. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the role of Spain in third place compared to the two large countries with the highest scientific production in absolute terms.

From the point of view of the institutions, there are differences between the two databases analyzed. However, the top five positions in the ranking are shared by the same institutions: University of Granada, University of Valencia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences and Leiden University. Once again, the predominance of Spanish institutions in this ranking stands out. International collaboration is undoubtedly a parameter that allows us to know the synergies in scientific production. In this case it has been shown that the institutions located in the top five positions of the ranking do not have a parallelism between quantity of production and international collaboration, they have 30% of international collaboration, that is to say, they have collaboration below the average, which without these institutions is 45%.

Regarding the topics where bibliometrics is applied, the publications have been categorized, and despite the differences between Scopus and WoS when classifying the publications, the results show that this type of studies have been classified mainly in the areas most related to bibliometrics. According to Scopus, in order of importance: Social Science and Computer Sciences, Medicine, Business, Management and Accounting, Engineering and Environmental Science. According to WoS: Information Science and Library Science, Computer Science, Environmental Sciences and Management. There is a high degree of interest in the application of bibliometrics to other disciplines as an element of analysis of their own progress.

Completing the review of the topics, the topics for Scopus indexing have been considered as an indicator of where the publications on bibliometrics stand out. In this sense, the trend also shows the predominance of topics related to the discipline addressed in this research. Hirsch Index, Self-Citation and Journal Impact Factor as predominant Topic Name in SciVal. Publications, Periodicals as Topic, Research as predominant Topic Cluster Names. Interestingly, the ones with the most citations per document are for the Topic Name, Social Science and Humanities, Research Evaluation and Book Publishers with 45 citations per document as average; and for the Topic Cluster Name, Decision Making, Fuzzy Sets, Models with 23 Cites per Document.

In InCites they are mostly included in the Macro Topic of Social Sciences with an average of 14 citations per document, in the Meso Topic of bibliometrics, scientometrics and Research Integrity, but with respect to citations per document the meso topic of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning stands out (19 C/D). In the Micro Topic, the main one by number of documents is bibliometrics, but regarding citations per document Fuzzy Sets stands out above all with more than 30 C/D. That is to say that in the citations per document the computer science topics stand out.

The analysis of the sources shows that, despite the different indexing criteria of JCR and SJR, there is variety in the categories in which they have been indexed. The first positions, according to the number of publications, are occupied by journals specialized in bibliometrics, but journals specialized in Medicine or Environment also appear among the first 20 journals. In terms of quartile ranking, a greater number of SJR journals are positioned in Q1 and Q2 compared to JCR, undoubtedly due to the different indexing criteria applied by the two databases. To complete the quartile ranking, impact factors and citation level, two metrics have been used that allow the performance of the sources based on the citations received and those expected to be received. The InCites CNCI shows that 7 of the 20 are below 1 and the SciVal FWCI shows that 9 of the 20 are also below this threshold.

In the analysis of the Medicine category alone, it has been observed that 136 countries have contributions in this field. The main countries are the United States, China and the United Kingdom. In the field of medicine, the main research areas studied were: Epidemiology, Pediatrics, Orthopedics, Cardiology, Neurosurgery, Radiology, Ophthalmology, Oncology, Plastic Surgery and Psychiatry.

With respect to Environmental Sciences category, less international dissemination has been found, with only 83 countries having worked in this field. The main ones are China, Spain and the United States. Regarding the top 10 institutions, it can be stated that only Spain and China are relevant. Spain focuses on sustainability and China on the environment. In the field of Environmental Science, the main research areas studied were: Sustainability, Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Ecology, Environmental Impact, Biodiversity, Environmental Protection, Environmental Management, Public Health and Environmental Monitoring.

The relationships between the citations of the publications have allowed, with an independent analysis, to establish clusters by key words based on the level of citation. These seven clusters were: Science Mapping, Research Productivity, Medicine, Environmental Sciences, Psychology, Nursing and Engineering. In the seven communities in which the 20 main keywords were collected, a predominance of terms related to bibliometrics applied to the different clusters was again observed. The main country keyword data has also been extracted, highlighting the relevance of China as the predominant country in four of the seven clusters analyzed. The independent analysis of the indexing category of the journals highlights that Medicine and Environmental Sciences are the most relevant areas in the field of bibliometrics, after Social Sciences and Computer Science.

In conclusion, there are many parameters that can be used to see the evolution of bibliometric studies in the period under analysis. In this case, bibliometric data and indicators have been used to study the evolution of this discipline over the years and the performance of publications. In any analysis it is important to start from the objectives of the study to be able to apply the appropriate metric values. In this sense, the recommendations established in the Leiden Manifesto and the San Francisco Declaration should not be forgotten to make proper use of the metrics that allow scientific production to be correctly assessed.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank to the CIAIMBITAL (University of Almeria, CeiA3) for its support.

Author Contributions

M.C. and A.A. conceived and performed the research; A.A. and E.S.-M. analyzed the data; M.C., A.A. and F.M.-A. wrote the paper. A.A. and F.M.-A. supervised the research. E.S.-M. and F.M.-A. revised the manuscript. They share the structure and aims of the manuscript, paper drafting, editing and review. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• University of Michigan Library
• Research Guides

Research Impact Metrics: Citation Analysis

• Web of Science
• Google Scholar
• Alternative Methods
• Journal Citation Report
• Scopus for Journal Ranking
• Google Journal Metrics
• Alternative Sources for Journal Ranking
• Other Factors to Consider When Choosing a Journal
• Finding Journal Acceptance Rates
• Text/Data Mining for Citation Indexes

Introduction

Scopus is considered by many to be the primary competitor to the Web of Science database for citation analysis and journal ranking statistics.

The Scopus web site claims this database is the "largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research." It is more international in coverage than Web of Science and the Scopus interface is simple and intuitive to use.

Find the Citation Count for a Publication

• Access Scopus (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)  
• Using the drop-down menu on the basic search option, select "Source Title" then enter the title of the journal and click the search button.

• The resulting list of articles are all of those which cited something in the particular journal title you searched.

Be aware: The citation count will only include the number of times the publication was cited by articles from the journals that Scopus covers.  Scopus does not count citations from every journal published around the world, nor does this method count all citations from books, conference proceedings, dissertations/theses, patents, technical reports or other types of publications.

Find the Correct Author in Scopus

Author search.

Be Aware: Look at the subject area and affiliation for each author listed. Multiple listings may in fact be referencing the same person.

Finding an Author Profile

For a quick report on a specific author which contains detailed information including then number of documents by this author in Scopus, number of times the author is cited within Scopus, co-authors, subject areas, h-index and other tools to analyze this author click on the author's name. 

You can also access these same details on an author anywhere an author's name is listed within Scopus. Click on an author's name from a list of search results or from an individual title and abstract record. 

Analyze Search Results by Author Name

In Scopus you can analyze any set of search results to find useful information about journals, authors over time. This option provides charts and graphs so you can quickly see the journal titles where an author published the journals which have published the most articles from your search results. 

• In which journals has this author published?
• In what years?
• What types of documents; book chapters, editorials, research articles, etc.?
• What are the primary subject areas for a specific author?
• Search by author name

• Use the various tabs to see analyzes of where and when this author published, which types of articles or documents were published and in which subject areas. 

Analyze a Journal

Analyze a journal in  Scopus

• Find out which authors have published the most articles in a specific journal
• These authors' affiliations and countries
• Types of documents/articles published in a chosen journal
• Primary subject areas covered in a chosen journal

• Check the box to select all the results and then click on Analyze search results.  

Analyze Any List of Results

You may find interesting information about the history of terminology in a subject area by analyzing your results in Scopus. The example search below gives you some idea on when the abbreviation AYA started being used in medicine to identify the specific population group Adolescents and Young Adults in cancer research related to oncology. 

• Select all the documents from this search and click the link to Analyze results .  

Eliminate Self-Citations From a Citation Count

See the instructions for 

• Select the "Author Search" tab on the Scopus search page.
• Enter the last name of an author and the first initial for the broadest search.
• Select one or more names from the list of results, based on affiliation, subject area and location.
• Click on the "View Citation Overview" button at the top of the list of results.
• You will be taken to the Citation Overview page for this/these authors.
• In the "Overview Options" box at the top of this page choose to exclude "self citations from selected authors" by checking the appropriate box.
• Click the "Update Overview" button to remove these self-citations.

Create a Citation Analysis Report for a Department or Research Center

For approximate* results for analyzing research output of a specific department or school within an institution use Advanced search in  Scopus.

• From the default search form, select the Advanced search tab
• From the list of advanced search codes double-click on the code AFFILORG, which stands for Affiliation Organization. Double-clicking the term will add it to the advanced search box. 
• In the parentheses following this code in the search box enter the name of the university or institution and combine it with w/5 followed by department or school key words

Example searches:

• AFFILORG ("University of Michigan" w/5 "psychology")
• AFFILORG ("University of Michigan" w/5 "school of social work")
• AFFILORG ("University of Michigan" w/5 neurosurgery) 

NOTE: Connecting terms with w/5 means simply means you are searching for these phrases or key words within 5 words of each other in this field. This method can be used to refine any search in Scopus and the number can range from 0 to 255. 

Once you have a list of results using this search you can select the entire list and analyze search results and view citation overview reports get information on publications written by your specific school, department or institution. 

* For a more thorough method of evaluating scholarly output by school or department perform author searches for each individual within a department or school and then combine these searches using search history and the connector OR, under advanced search.  It is also important to note that Scopus does not have complete citation information for articles published before 1996.

Determine What Journal Articles Have Cited a Publication

This section will explain how to find the number of times a particular article has been cited within the Scopus database.

• For any title in a list of search results, scroll over the number at the far right of the document record. You will see that this number is the times others have cited this article.   

• The number of times an article has been cited by others is a form of measuring the value of that article. 

Find an Author's Most Highly Cited Paper

• Access Scopus ​
• Follow the instructions above for Author Search.  
• Click on the appropriate authors name to view all articles written by this person.  
• The list of documents associated with an author is sorted by date, with the most recently published document at the top of the list. To change this sort option so that you can quickly see the articles cited the most by others click on the  "cited by" link at the top, right of the list of results. This will re-sort the results so that the most cited article is at the top of the list. 

Find the Most Highly Cited Papers in a Journal

This method can only be used for journals covered in Scopus; variant citations are not included in the citation determination.

• Access Scopus (sign in for off campus use, if necessary)  
• Use the default search option "document search" but select  "Source Title" from the dropdown menu, enter the full journal title and click the search button.  

•   On the results page, click on the column header "Cited by" at the far right to sort the resulting articles by times cited. The article which has been cited the most times will appear at the top of the list of results.

Set Up a Citation Alert for a Journal Article

• Access Scopus (sign in for off campus use, if necessary)
• Use the "Document Search" or "Author Search to find a specific article. 
• Click on the title of the document for which you want to receive notification when it is cited. 
• In the Cited by box at the right, click on the "E-mail Alert" link.

• To edit or remove an alert, click on the "My Alerts" button at the top of the page, just under the Scopus header; when your alerts are displayed, click the "Edit" link to edit the alert or select the alert and click the "Delete" button a specific alert from your list.  Alerts are automatically set for one year.

How do I find Open Access documents and journals in Scopus?

You can locate Open Access (OA) journals and/or articles by conducting 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 refers to journals and articles in which all peer reviewed scholarly articles are online and available without restrictions.

Open Access (OA) filters are available in Scopus and Scopus API to provide greater clarity and a breakdown of the type of Open Access per document. There are currently ~17 million articles in Scopus using this Open Access classification system and Scopus is planning to expand its definition of Open Access to include those available in open repositories.

How do I find and filter Open Access documents?

• Perform a Document search . The Document search results page opens.
• All Open Access: All documents that fall within any of the Scopus Open Access filters.
• Gold: Documents are in journals which only publish open access.
• Hybrid Gold: Documents are in journals which provide authors the choice of publishing open access.
• Bronze: Bronze status is assigned to a document if there is another (publisher-specific) license other than a Creative Commons license (such as Elsevier’s publisher license for Open Archive), or no license at all.
• Green: Documents may be available as gold or other free-to-read forms on the publisher platform.
• Click 'Limit to' . The Document search results list updates and the Open Access indicator appears below each Open Access title.

Where are the Open Access definitions derived from?

The Scopus source for OA documents is Unpaywall , a database run by Impactstory (a non-profit organization) which harvest Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories.

Which Open Access filters are supported in Scopus?

Where can I find the Open Access indicators and filters?

You can filter results on the Documents Results page filter panel. You can filter by all Open Access documents or by each of the OA tags: gold, hybrid gold, green and bronze.

From the Scopus Advanced search, the OA filters are found under the Document field code section. The values, in combination with the OA field code, allow users to build queries using the OA filters.

The Advanced search page also allows you to search for Green Final and Green Accepted OA documents if there is a need for a more granular view of Green OA documents. Green Final and Green Accepted OA filters are not available on the Document search results page filter panel.

Advanced Search queries with OA filter examples

You can search Gold Open Access articles only and add a Boolean operator to search for other field codes like ABS or TITLE-ABS-KEY():

• Entering (OA(publisherfullgold) OR OA(publisherhybridgold)) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY(heart) returns documents with Heart that are Gold Open Access only
• Entering TITLE-ABS-KEY(heart) AND NOT OA(ALL) returns documents with Heart that exclude Open Access documents

Why am I seeing more documents per OA filter than the total document results count?

An Open Access document in Scopus can be tagged with more than one OA status as an article can be available in different OA versions (such as Gold and Green). In the OA filter facet, there is a count for Gold and Green for the same document. Note: There is not duplicate counting for publisher-enabled OA documents (Gold, Hybrid-Gold, and Bronze categories).

How often is the Open Access information updated in Scopus?

Scopus receives weekly updates from Unpaywall for the documents indexed in Scopus.

Are the Open Access filters available via the Scopus APIs?

Users can use the same search queries and OA values, as explained on the Advanced Search page, with the Scopus document search and retrieval APIs.

How can I identify which document is an Open Access document in Scopus?

On the Scopus Document details page there is an Open Access label to indicate that a document is OA after the document title.

On the Scopus document search result pages there is an Open Access label below the document title for each separate title if a document is OA.

Can I search for the status of the Creative Commons license of a document in Scopus?

No, Creative Commons (CC) license information is not searchable via Scopus.

Open Access (OA) in Scopus is represented at the journal/source level. Out of the +21,000 active journals indexed in Scopus, approximately 4,065 (and increasing) are registered as OA journals. Open Access refers to journals and articles in which all peer reviewed scholarly articles are online and available without restrictions.

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.

How do I find and filter Open Access journals?

• From the Sources page, enter a source title, ISSN, or publisher name using the drop-down list.
• Click 'Find sources' . The Sources list updates to reflect the entered search criteria.
• From the Filter refine list, select 'Display only Open Access journals' .
• Click 'Apply' . The Source listing updates and the Open Access indicator appears next to each Open Access title.

Where are Open Access for jounals definitions derived from?

In Scopus, journals are registered as being Open Access only if they are registered as Gold OA or Subsidized OA at one or both of the following:

• Directory of Open Access Journals: https://doaj.org/
• Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources: http://road.issn.org/

What is included?

View of the OA journal types is included in the OA journal list, when registered at the Directory of Open Access Journals, and/or the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources.

These journal types are excluded from the OA journal list:

Scopus updates the OA journal list portion of the Scopus Title list ( http://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content#content-policy-and-selection ) once a year at the end of May, which may lead to minor and temporary discrepancies in the OA journal status.

See All Science Journal Classification Codes (ASJC) to review all ASJC codes used for Scopus sources.

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With a proven track record of meeting tight deadlines, we guarantee timely delivery, allowing our clients to submit their papers on time without compromising on quality.

ResearchProspect’s scopus paper writers possess the expertise to navigate complex research topics and deliver clear, concise, and well-structured papers.

Their deep understanding of the scopus paper publishing process and adherence to rigorous citation guidelines ensure that our clients’ papers have a higher chance of acceptance in reputable journals.

With a commitment to providing top-rated service and achieving exceptional results, ResearchProspect’s scopus writers are widely regarded as the best choice for academic success in the world of scholarly publishing.

What Is A Scopus Paper?

A Scopus paper refers to a scholarly article or research paper that has been indexed in Scopus, one of the largest and most comprehensive academic databases. Scopus is widely used by researchers, academics, and institutions to access high-quality, peer-reviewed literature from various disciplines.

To be included in Scopus, a paper must meet certain criteria, including academic quality, relevance, and citation impact. Scopus indexes journals, books, and patents, providing researchers with a vast repository of scientific knowledge.

Having a paper indexed in Scopus signifies its credibility, as Scopus employs rigorous evaluation standards. Scopus papers are accessible to a global audience, enhancing the visibility and impact of the research.

Researchers often aim to publish their work in Scopus-indexed journals to gain recognition within the academic community and contribute valuable insights to their respective fields.

The inclusion of a paper in Scopus signifies its academic excellence and relevance, making it an essential resource for scholars and researchers worldwide.

How To Choose A Good Topic for a Scopus Paper?

Here are some tips and tricks to help you select a compelling and suitable research topic:

• Identify Your Interests
• Explore Current Literature
• Narrow Down Your Focus
• Evaluate Feasibility
• Relevance And Significance
• Consult With Mentors And Experts
• Consider Your Target Audience
• Flexibility

Top Scopus Paper Journals

here is a list of some renowned journals that have consistently been considered top-tier scopus journals in various fields:

• The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
• Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS)
• Physical Review Letters (PRL)
• Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC)
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
• Nature Communications

Scopus papers refer to academic publications featured on Scopus, a comprehensive research database. Scopus indexes scholarly journals, and patents, providing a vast collection of peer-reviewed literature from various disciplines.

Launched officially in 1964, it is now owned by Clarivate Analytics (previously Thomson Reuters’ Intellectual Property and Science business).

These journals are recognized as leading publications in the fields of science and technology due to their rigorous selection process.

The journal selection process for both scopus and SCIE, undertaken by Thomson Reuters, follows strict criteria, indicating that they share the same level of quality.

While the primary difference between scopus paper and SCIE lies in their storage format, both are accessible online, with scopus also available in CD/DVD format.

This distinction aside, the quality and selection criteria for both Science Citation Index® and Science Citation Index ExpandedTM are essentially identical, emphasizing their reputable standing in the scientific community.

Scopus covers a range of document types, including:

Original research or opinion published in peer-reviewed journals, subdivided into sections like abstract, introduction, methods, results, conclusion, and references. Can be short as one page in trade journals.

Article-in-Press (AiP)

Accepted articles available online before official publication.

Whole monographs or entire books; chapters are also indexed separately.

Individual chapters in books or book series volumes.

ConferencePaper

Original articles reporting data presented at symposia, of any length.

Descriptive metadata documents about online accessible datasets, focusing on data collection, access, and reuse.

Summaries of several articles or providing editorial opinions or news. Erratum: Reports of errors, corrections, or retractions of previously published papers.

Correspondence with the editor or individual letters.

Short items not suited to other types, including discussions, commentaries, questions, answers, and comments on other articles.

Retracted Article

Published articles retracted by the author(s) or publisher.

Significant reviews of original research, including scopus papers, often with extensive bibliographies.

Short Survey

Mini-reviews of original research, shorter than typical reviews with a less extensive bibliography.

Scopus encompasses various document types, providing a comprehensive and diverse collection of scholarly literature.

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