SCOPUS for Science and Medicine Isabel McMann Penny Roberts 18 th February, 2009
What is Scopus? Scopus is a large abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources. Works with SCIRUS search engine
What does it include? Peer-reviewed journals Results from scientific web pages Patent records Medline records 1966 – Content from other databases: Embase Compendex Geobase 1980-
Why use Scopus? Scholarly, interdisciplinary content Weekly or daily updates Complex searching and refining results Links to full text and OLIS Searches databases and the web simultaneously Search history can be viewed Current awareness alerts can be set up Easy to set up bibliography of results
Functionality Searching Limits Sorting results Citation searching Search History Alerts Output
Web searching Also searches the web via SCIRUS Elsevier’s science search engine
Why Scirus? Pinpoints relevant data on the Web Finds the latest articles etc. Filters out non-scientific sites Searches a combination of web sources
Weaknesses No controlled vocabulary/ subject heading searching Citation searching more comprehensive in Web of Knowledge Clinical queries - use Medline / PubMed
Strengths User friendly, intuitive Inter-disciplinary academic content Good for any science topic Good for free-text, keyword searching Simultaneous web and patent searches Citation searching (back to 1996) Alerts, to keep you up to date with research Many links to full text Regular updates/improvements Good help pages and online support
Next week’s session Resources for Geography and Environment Monday 23 rd February at OUCS – book online
Your subject specialists: Bio- and Environmental Science: Physical Sciences: Medical Sciences:
Sample search: What are the effects of climate change and global warming on fisheries Search as: (climate change OR global warming) AND fisheries
Topics you can try… What are the ethical implications of face transplants? How does solar power help with the problem of global warming? How is airplane safety affected by metal fatigue?