Health Sciences Databases Help Guide

Scopus

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. 

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).

1. Select the document or documents you would like to export.
2. Click the ‘Export’ link. A list of file or reference management tools will appear. 
3. If this is the first time you are exporting, select your reference management tool or file type.
4. 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.
5. 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.

You can setup and manage alerts in Scopus

From a search results list, click ‘Set alert’. The Set search alert page opens.

1. From the Set search alert page or Set Alert pop-up, enter a ‘Name of alert’.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Click on "set search alert" to save the alert.
5. 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.