What is Scopus
Scopus is an international scholarly literature database that indexes journals, articles, books, conference materials, and tracks citations, authors, and sources.
In detail
Scopus is one of the largest scholarly databases. It is used for finding publications, checking journals, analyzing citations, and evaluating the research activity of authors and institutions.
Scopus includes several levels of data
- sources — journals, proceedings, book series;
- documents — articles, reviews, conference papers, editorials;
- authors — profiles with Author ID;
- citations — data about scholarly references between publications.
Scopus is used by authors and institutions to
- check whether a journal is indexed;
- view journal metrics;
- find an author’s publications;
- evaluate citations;
- analyze research performance.
It is important to understand the difference between a journal and an article. If a journal is indexed in Scopus, it does not mean every new article will appear there immediately. Indexing of an article depends on metadata delivery by the publisher and subsequent processing in the database.
Scopus also uses a system of source selection and reevaluation. Therefore, a journal’s presence in the database depends not only on submitted data but also on requirements for quality, regularity, and publication policy.
What is important to remember
Scopus is not just a list of journals but a full scholarly database with analytics on sources, authors, and citations.