Research Impact, Citation Analysis & Altmetrics

Scopus is another resource frequently used for citation analysis and journal ranking statistics. The Scopus claims to be the "largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research."

But ...

A citation search in the Scopus is not a complete citation search:

• Citation searching in Scopus only covers the titles include in this database.
• Since Scopus was only released in 2004, it does not have the long established record of Web of Science.
• Citation tracking in Scopus is only available for articles published from 1996 to the present. 
• In the past, coverage was considered weak and uneven in some areas such as physics, astronomy, math, sociology, philosophy, theology, arts and literature.

 This links below provide instructions about how to:

• Get the Citation Count for a Specific Author
• Determine the Most Highly Cited Publications for an Author
• Eliminate Self-Citations from a Citation Count
• Find the Citation Count for a Publication
• Set Up a Citation Alert for a Journal Article
• Determine What Journal Articles Have Cited a Publication
• Determine the Most Highly Cited Articles for a Journal

Run the Author Citation Overview Search:

1. Access Scopus from the Health Sciences Library homepage or above. (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)
2. Click the author search tab. Type the Last name and intials or first name of the author you want to find. For the broadest search enter the last name and only the first initial of the first name.
3. Once on the View Citation Overview screen choose to sort documents in descending order from the drop-down menu in the Overview Options box. Click the "Update Overview" button to resort the list of citations and see which one has been cited the most. The search results will display all authors who match your criteria and who have citations in Scopus. Make sure you look at the subject area and affiliation for each author listed. Multiple listings may be available for a single author.
4. Select all versions of the author you need. 
5. Select "view citation overview" at the top of the screen.

View the Author Details Report

Scopus provides author reports that include the following information:

• Personal information (name formats), author ID, affiliation
• Research overview including the number of documents published and available in Scopus, references, citations, h-index, co-authors, web search, and subject area.
• History including the authors publication range, related affiliations, and source history.

Find this information by clicking on the author's name. in the initial search results. You can also click on any author name when doing a normal search in Scopus to view this information.

1. Access Scopus from the Health Sciences Library homepage or above. (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)
2. Click the author search tab. Type the Last name and initials or first name of the author you want to find. For the broadest search enter the last name and only the first initial of the first name.
3. Select all versions of the author you need
4. Select "View Citation Overview" at the top of the screen.
5. Once on the Citation Overview screen choose to sort documents in descending order from the drop-down menu in the Overview Options box. Click the "Update Overview" button to resort the list of citations and see which one has been cited the most. The search results will display all authors who match your criteria and who have citations in Scopus. Make sure you look at the subject area and affiliation for each author listed. Multiple listings may be available for a single author.

1. Access Scopus from the Health Sciences Library homepage or above. (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)
2. Click the author search tab. Type the Last name and intials or first name of the author you want to find. For the broadest search enter the last name and only the first initial of the first name.
3. Once on the Citation Overview screen choose to sort documents in descending order from the drop-down menu in the Overview Options box. Click the "Update Overview" button to resort the list of citations and see which one has been cited the most. The search results will display all authors who match your criteria and who have citations in Scopus. Make sure you look at the subject area and affiliation for each author listed. Multiple listings may be available for a single author.
4. Select all versions of the author you need. 
5. Select "view citation overview" at the top of the screen.
6. In the Overview options box, click the option to exclude from citation overview "self citations of selected authors".
7. Click the "update overview" button to remove the self-citations.

1. Access Scopus from the Health Sciences Library homepage or above. (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)
2. On the basic search screen, select "Source Title" from the drop down menu. Enter the journal title and click the search button. 
3. On the left hand side of the results page, scroll to the Source Title section. Select the exact source title you want. Click the limit to button.
4. Confirm that the results are from the journal that you want and select the "All" box. Next, click the "View cited by" link. 
5. The resulting list are those that cited articles in the journal you searched.

Be aware: The citation count will only include the number of times the publication was cited by articles from the journals that Scopus covers.  Scopus does not count citations from every journal published around the world, nor does this method count citations from books, conference proceedings, dissertations/theses, patents, technical reports or other types of publications.

1. Access Scopus from the Health Sciences Library homepage or above. (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)
2. Login to your personal account using the option at the upper-right hand corner of the page.
3. Search for your article.
4. Select the article you're interested in from the results list.
5. In the "Cited by since 1996" box at the right hand side of the screen is the option to "inform me when this document is cited in Scopus". Choose to set an alert or set a RSS feed.

This section demostrates how to find the number of times a particular article has been cited within the Scopus database.

1. Search for the article you want to use for your citation analysis in the search box. If entering the full title, use quotation marks around the title.
2. The article will appear in a search results list and the column to the far right will have the number of times this article has been cited within Scopus. Click on the number listed under the "Cited by" column to view the list of articles that cited the article you searched.
3. You can also click on the article title. A box on the right hand side will display the number of times the article has been cited in Scopus. You can set an alert on this page to inform you when the document is cited in Scopus. You can also see other citing sources (Web and Patients.

This method can only be used for journals covered in Scopus; variant citations are not included in the citation determination.

1. Access Scopus from the Health Sciences Library homepage or above. (sign in for off-campus use, if necessary)
2. Use the Document search box. Select  "Source Title" from the dropdown menu, enter the full journal title, and click the search button.
3. On the left hand side of the results page, scroll to the Source Title section. Select the exact source title you want. Click the limit to button.
4. Under Sort By at the far right, sort by "Cited by" to sort the resulting articles by times cited. The article which has been cited the most times will appear at the top of the list of results.