WISER: What’s new in Science SCOPUS, SCIRUS and Google Scholar Kate Williams and Juliet Ralph May 2006

SCOPUS – New from Elsevier Science & Social Science subjects Science & Social Science subjects Award-winning: “Best STM Information Product 2005” Award-winning: “Best STM Information Product 2005” “the largest abstract and citation database”: “the largest abstract and citation database”: 15,000 journal titles 15,000 journal titles 27.7 million abstracts 27.7 million abstracts Updated daily Updated daily

SCOPUS   From 4,000 publishers – not just Elsevier  Conferences  Patents million records from 4 Patent Offices  Many links to full text via TOUR button

Content   Publisher-submitted records   Medline records   Content from other Elsevier databases*: Embase Fluidex Compendex Geobase World Textile Index Biobase (*Source: Deis and Goodman, 2005)   Content coverage etc at

Scopus : “the broadest source of STM and Social Sciences information” 14,20014,200 2,7002,7002,5002,5004,5004,5005,9005,900 Life & Health (100% Medline) Chemistry Physics Engineering Biological Agricultural Environmental Social Sciences Psychology Economics 4,000 publishers STM & Social Sciences

Strengths  User friendly:  “Scopus has been designed and user- tested so you can spend less time mastering databases and more time on research”

Strengths  Good for free-text, keyword searching  Good starting point for any science topic  Simultaneous web and patent searches  Citation searching (back to 1996)  Alerts, to keep you up to date with research  Many links to full text via TOUR button  Constantly being improved/updated!

Weaknesses  Less strong on controlled vocabulary/ subject headings author keywords plus some indexing terms from other Elsevier databases and Medline author keywords plus some indexing terms from other Elsevier databases and Medline  Citation searching more comprehensive in Web of Knowledge  Limits are less sophisticated than some other databases  Clinical queries - use Medline / PubMed

Other features  Also searches the web via SCIRUS, Elsevier’s science search engine 

Scirus & Google Scholar  New internet search engines  Available to anyone, anywhere, anytime  Focus on academic material  Abstracts of journal articles, plus links to full-text if Oxford has a subscription  Also theses, books, reports, preprints etc  Advanced Search screen is offered, eg restrict by date, author, journal title

Scirus Scirus  Focus on science and medicine  Sources and content explained and listed in “About us”  Searches Journals, Preferred Web, Other Web  Wildcards for truncation  Displays most recent first  Results can be sorted by date or relevance  Results can be marked, ed, saved

Google Scholar : Pros  All subjects covered  No advertising  Results ranked by relevance (but formula not always clear!)  “Cited by” links  “Library search” links to library catalogues 

Google Scholar : Cons  Less clear about sources and content searched  Questions over frequency of updates  Limited search capabilities compared with bibliographic databases  Not possible to re-sort results, or mark them for ing or saving

So why use bibliographic databases like Scopus?  Clearly listed, scholarly content  Updated weekly or daily  Indexing and subject headings  Complex searching possible  Eg using Wildcard symbols  Refine, sort, filter, limit your results  Search history can be viewed  Searches can be combined  Current awareness alerts can be set up