Scopus

Scopus from Elsevier is a new multidisciplinary database including citation searching and therefore a competitor to Web of Science from Thomson Reuters. Please find extensive documentation by Elsevier: info.scopus.com

Advantage of Scopus

• new database design providing high performance in searching and sorting of large answer sets
• coverage of "grey" literature (technical reports, conference papers ...)
• coverage of non-English literature especially in Arts and Humanities
• author identifier - Scopus tries to keep track of all name variants of an author and his afilliations
• affiliation identifier - Scopus tries to keep track off all names of an institution and its branches
• abstracts of older literature are included
• online resources are covered

Drawback of Scopus

• references starting in the year 1996, direct comparison of citation values from Web of Science to Scopus are very sensitive to correct time limits
• Scopus coverage of older literature depends strongly on the scientific field

Recommodations

Scopus is a new multidiciplinary database with extended coverage. Please keep in mind that the field specific databases, however, basically cover even more primary sources.

Check Scopus as primary source for your daily work. In particular if your are working in a field where the follwing points are important:

• grey literature (technical and internal reports, standards), e.g. Material Science
• conference papers and online publications and prototypes, e.g. Informatics
• small journals for a special interest groups, e.g. Mathematics
• non-English publications, e.g. Arts and Humanities