Guides and databases: Scopus: Documents search

Documents search

Use the 'Documents' search option to search for publications on a particular topic, or other search criteria.

Enter your first search term in the search box.
Choose the field you wish to search from the drop-down menu. If you are searching for records on a particular subject or topic you can leave this as the default Article title, Abstract, Keywords.
To add more search fields click on the + add search field button.
Choose date limits if required with add date range. Then hit Search.

Document search tips

The search is not case sensitive.
A hyphen is considered a space.
Scopus will automatically search for some variations on words, such as plurals, e.g. criterion will find criteria.
‘Stop words’ such as 'the', 'his', 'because' are ignored, unless the phrase is enclosed in quotation marks "".
The question mark ? symbol will replace a single character, while an asterisk * will replace multiple characters, e.g. wom?n will find women or woman; colour* will find colourful, coloured, etc.
Boolean searching is available – choose from the drop down boxes when search fields are added, or type in the operators (AND, OR, AND NOT).
Take care if using multiple operators as they are processed in the following order of precedence: OR, AND, AND NOT.

How to conduct a basic search

Scopus 'How to conduct a basic search' tutorial video.

Search operators explained

The search operators AND and OR are used in searching to combine search terms together.

AND retrieves articles which contain all of your concepts. For example, if you are interested in the use of cognitive behaviour therapy for gambling disorders, you would search for cognitive behaviour therapy AND gambling.

OR retrieves records which contain any of your concepts. For example, you might search for cognitive behaviour therapy OR CBT to retrieve all articles on the topic.

How to search for a phrase in SCOPUS

There are two different ways to search for phrases in Scopus, a loose phrase or an exact phrase.

Using "quotation marks" will search for a loose phrase, where the words appear together in a fixed order. By default, Scopus automatically includes common variant spellings (eg US/UK) and most plural forms in the search. A loose phrase search can include wildcards, eg "wind turbine*" to match "wind turbine" or "wind turbines"; other punctuation is ignored. Be careful if copy-pasting - Scopus only recognises standard quotation marks "", not smart quotation marks “” which are often added by word processors.
To search for an exact phrase, use {curly brackets}. This will search only for the exact words as given, ignoring spelling variation or plurals. It will also force matching for punctuation.

"blue bird" = blue bird, blue birds, blue-bird

{blue bird} = blue bird only