1. John Rylands University Library
INFORMATION SKILLS TRAINING
SCOPUS Database
To access the database, you will first need to open a web browser. Then go to the University library
homepage, http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/
Select the link to “individual databases” – then select the letter “S”. A list of databases will be
displayed. Select SCOPUS from the list, then click on the link to on-campus access
Exercise One Basic (Keyword) Search
In the first search box, type “lung cancer”. You will then need to add a new search field – click on “add
field”. In the second of the search boxes, type “smokers”. Limit the search to items published after
1980.
When the results are displayed, refine them by limiting results to just “Medicine” and “Pharmacology”.
Further refine the results by selecting just “Articles”. (you may need to choose “add categories” first)
Open the tab for “web” results. Notice the differences in the records displayed to those from the
“Scopus” results tab.
Exercise Two Author Search
Choose the “Author search” option. In the search box, enter the name Stephen Hawking into the
appropriate sections. From the list of results, choose “Hawking, Stephen W” (third in the list). To do
this, place a check mark in the box to the left of the name, then select “show documents”.
Once the results are displayed, limit them again by limiting results to include just “Physics and
astronomy”. The fifth paper should be entitled “ A non singular universe”. Click on the
icon to see if the electronic version of the full text is available.
Return to the results page. How many times has the article entitled “DeSitter entropy, quantum
entanglement and AdS/CFT” (ninth in the results list) been cited by other authors?
Click on the number under the column headed “Citations” for the same article, to see which articles
cited Hawking’s original paper.
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2. Exercise Three Author and Keyword
This search will show you how to find a specific article.
Search for an article by Brian Cox entitled “Measurement of the top quark mass in the dilepton
channel”.
Using the Basic search option, enter the name “Cox” in the first search box, then use the drop down
menu to change the field to be searched from “article title, abstract, keywords” to “authors”. Add an
extra search box, then type “Dilepton channel” and then change the field to be searched to “article
title”.
In which year was the article published?
Is the full text article available?
Has it been cited by any other papers?
Exercise Four Exporting references to Endnote
In this exercise you will do a simple search and then send the references to a bibliographic software
package. It will not matter if you haven’t used Endnote before.
Using basic search, type “titanium” in the search box; add a second search field and look for “variant
selection”. Make sure the field searched is “article title, abstract and keywords”. Limit the date to
articles published after 1999. You should have retrieved around 35-40 references.
Select the first ten items by placing a check mark in the small box to the left of each article title.
Once you have done this, click on the “export” button, directly above the results list. A new dialogue
screen will open. Ensure that the chosen export option is “RIS format”. Click on the “Export” button.
The Endnote software should open automatically and deposit all the selected references into an Endnote
file.
Exercise Five Citation Searching
In this exercise you will track the citations for a particular author and a particular article over time.
This will become valuable when you are considering the research performance of a particular
researcher.
From the Scopus home page, choose Author search. In the surname search box, type Dawkins. In the
“initials or first name” box, enter the initial letter “R”. In the affiliation box, type “University of
Oxford”.
When the results are displayed, there should be four authors listed. Place a check mark in the box next
to the entry for Dawkins, Richard, then click on the “view citation overview” button.
When the new results are displayed, you are looking at the citation overview screen. You can change
the variables using the drop down menus. Change the date range to cover the years 2000-2010 – then
click on Update overview.
The results show the citation analysis for Professor Dawkins’ published work – forty or more papers in
all. You can change the display by changing the drop down menu – try changing the “sort documents”
option.
If you change “Year descending” to “Citations descending”, the most highly cited papers come at the
head of the list.
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3. Exercise Six H-Index
A researcher’s H-Index gives an idea of the relative esteem that the researcher’s work is held in by
other researchers. The measurement is gained through the citation analysis of an authors work over a
period of time.
From the Scopus home page, choose Author search. In the surname search box, type Rothwell, then in
the first name box, type Nancy. Type Manchester in the affiliation search box.
The results screen should display one author – choose this one (Nancy Jane Rothwell) by putting a
checkmark in the box to the left of the authors name. Then click on the “view citation overview”
button.
When the results are displayed, you will see the H-index score in a small box to the right of the screen.
(The score can change over time). By clicking on the button, you can show the author’s
research activity. The first screen to be displayed shows the H-graph – by selecting the Articles
published tab, you see a graph showing the number of articles published year by year. By selecting the
citations tab, you can see how many times the author is cited each year. You can switch from “chart
view” to “data view” by selecting the highlighted option.
These tools are useful in determining how others see the author’s work.
Martin Snelling
Joule Library
JRUL
October 2010
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