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Since its inception in 2004, Scopus has evolved into a leading abstract and citation database to serve our user community of academics, librarians and research institutions. Our team has spent the last 20 years innovating our solution and exponentially growing our content for this purpose. Read on to follow this journey and learn what we are planning for the next 20 years.
In 2004, when Elsevier was ready to release Scopus, the research world was buzzing about some big news events:
Completion of the Human Genome Project
Introduction of the first commercially available GPS navigation systems
Development of Blu-ray disc technology
Discovery of Sedna, a distant dwarf planet
Identification of dark energy
This year, 2024, represents a milestone in Scopus history, marking two decades of innovation to support global research.
As technology advanced, Scopus also evolved by expanding content beyond journals (to books, conference materials, and more). We also enriched and connected data to enhance and expand Scopus use cases.
Scopus will continue to evolve as a premier research solution in the following ways:
Investing in new technologies, such as generative AI
Employing the Scopus Content Selection & Advisory Board to ensure research integrity standards
Continuing to develop methods to ensure Scopus data is accurate and up to date
Expanding Scopus content to provide the most comprehensive abstract & index database available
Working with our community to develop an intuitive and easy-to-use product
“Staying ahead of the curve is critical for our team. We want to identify emerging trends in the community early on. By addressing these trends before they become significant to the community, we can be well-prepared to support important customer needs effectively.”
YK
Yoshiko Kakita
Senior Director of Scopus Product Management
The Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) is an international group of scientists, researchers and librarians who represent the major scientific disciplines. The CSAB is comprised of 17 Subject Chairs, each representing a specific subject field. The Board works with the Scopus team to understand how Scopus is used, what content is relevant for users and what enhancements should be made.
The addition of unique author identifiers allowed the Scopus team to address the issue of author disambiguation.
The Affiliation Identifier distinguishes between affiliations by assigning a unique number to each institution with publications in Scopus and grouping together the documents affiliated with that organization. This marked the point when Scopus could begin addressing research performance at an institutional level.
The organization profile allows users to see a holistic view of an institution’s research output. This page has expanded beyond document information to include information on collaborations and U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) research activity.
This free resource allows researchers to review their Scopus profiles and submit feedback, giving them the ability to set a preferred name, merge profiles, add and remove documents and update their affiliation.
By integrating Scopus with ORCID, publications in Scopus can be added to an ORCID profile. ORCID is a free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for researchers.
CiteScore metrics enrich the evaluation of serial titles and provide transparent data to help measure the citation impact for journals, book series, conference proceedings and trade journals. This comprehensive, clear and current system of metrics for analysis can be accessed for free.
Elsevier was an early adopter of machine learning to process funding metadata from acknowledgement sections on Scopus. This technology was a precursor to generative AI, which was the foundation for Scopus AI.
A preprint is a version of a scholarly paper that precedes publication in a peer-reviewed journal and acts as an early indication of future research. Scopus has partnered with leading industry preprint server providers for this content.
Universities are monitoring and mapping how the work of their researchers contributes to the SDGs. Scopus users can now explore SDG research on Scopus organization profiles.
Users can identify topic experts or potential collaborators with a simple search tool.
Scopus AI is an intuitive and intelligent search tool powered by generative AI (GenAI) that leverages the trusted, peer-reviewed content in Scopus to help researchers navigate unfamiliar academic fields, accelerate their knowledge discovery process, and support greater multidisciplinary collaboration.
Overview of all innovations that were designed to make Scopus a more powerful tool to support research
Download infographic opens in new tab/windowOverall Scopus content has increased over 260% since its introduction, but this is only part of the story. In the past 20 years we have expanded content to include books, conferences and preprints. Scopus gets daily updates to its content from 7000+ of publishers to ensure comprehensive coverage for users. In addition to the quantity of content, our team strives to ensure its quality.
The following types of Scopus content provide a fertile knowledge base for researchers:
Journals – 28.3K+ active journals
Books – 368K+ book titles
Conference materials – 161K conference events
Preprints – 2.33+ million preprints
To allow for a deeper user experience, all of this content is enriched by a number of features, including:
Author profiles
Organization profiles
Open Access tagging
Funding References
SDG data
Since its inception, Scopus has been supported by a team of dedicated product, sales and marketing professionals. Their goal is simple: Work with our community to develop the best possible solution, deliver it to our customers and support users to ensure they benefit from it.
Our team's dedication remains as strong in year 20 as it was at the start. Meet some of our members and discover the driving force behind Scopus.
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PK
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The saying The Future is Now can sound cliché, but with Scopus it holds weight. Scopus continues to develop on the leading edge of technology. Our next 20 years of innovation began at the beginning of 2024 when we were first to market with a generative AI product for researcher discovery. In our tradition of innovation, Scopus AI has already evolved and there is more on the way. Take a moment to learn about Scopus AI, the start of our next 20 years of innovation.
