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LibGuides

Advanced Library Search Strategies

Learn how to search for articles, books, and other scholarly works through citation chasing and optimal keyword searching. This guide accompanies the Savvy Researcher workshop, "Advanced Library Search Strategies."

About Scopus

Scopus is a citation and abstract database of peer-reviewed literature from the sciences. This database covers research from the Life, Physical, Health, and Social Sciences as well as the Humanities. In addition to citation chasing, you can search by Author, by Document, and even by Affiliation, meaning you can see all of the articles published by U of I Scopus indexes.

Citation Chasing in Scopus

Forward

  1. Scroll down to the icons on the Library homepage. Click on the middle icon, "Databases by Subject & A-Z" (it is an orange computer logo with 'A-Z' on its screen).
    • This is the list of all the Library databases. Use the search bar on that page to locate "Scopus." Click on the title to enter the database.
  2. When you get into Scopus, enter the information you have about the author or article. In this example we will search for "Basic Local Alignment Search Tool" and change the drop down box to say "Article Title." Then click on "Add Search Field" to add another search box. In that one we will put the author's last name and first initial (Miller, W) and search by Author.

  3. Three results should appear. The correct one is the third option. Click on the article title. Look to the right of the record for the number of times the article has been cited. Click on "View all 75700 citing documents" to see the full list of articles that have cited it.

  4. The final result is a list of articles that have cited the article.
 You will see the name of the article, "Basic Local Alignment Search Tool" in the top left corner, as well as the number of articles.

Note: Cited references go back only to 1970 in Scopus.


Backward

  1. Scroll down to the icons on the Library homepage. Click on the middle icon, "Databases by Subject & A-Z" (it is an orange computer logo with 'A-Z' on its screen).
    • This is the list of all the Library databases. Use the search bar on that page to locate "Scopus." Click on the title to enter the database.
  2. When you get into Scopus, enter the information you have about the author or article. In this example we will search for "Basic Local Alignment Search Tool" and change the drop down box to say "Article Title." Then click on "Add Search Field" to add another search box. In that one we will put the author's last name and first initial (Miller, W) and search by Author.

  3. Three results should appear. The correct one is the third option. Click on the article title. Several rows under the title of the article, click on the 'Full text options' drop down menu to access the full-text version of the article. Clicking the 'Discover full text" button will prompt you to log in with your NetID and password, if you have not already, and will also prompt a 'Discover Full-Text Linking' page. At this page, underneath 'View Online' you will see two linked databases that have full-text availability of that article. For this example, click on the first of the two, "Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals Complete."
  4. Once you have accessed the item record for the full-text at ScienceDirect, scroll towards the bottom of the record until you see the References section. There you will be able to see the articles that the author of "Basic Local Alignment Search Tool" cited in the writing of this article.