SUBJECT:

UC San Diego Campus to Evaluate Scopus Database

The entire University of California community now has access- through February 10, 2010- to Scopus, a large interdisciplinary abstract and citation database of research literature and selected Web sites developed by the scholarly publisher Elsevier. The arrangement is part of the latest license for Elsevier's ScienceDirect journals package negotiated by the California Digital Library (CDL) on behalf of the ten UC campuses.

During the Scopus evaluation period, members of the UC San Diego community are invited to consider its coverage and functionalities in comparison with similar databases, such as ISI's Web of Science and Google Scholar. Given the current fiscal restraints throughout the UC system, it is unlikely that CDL or the UCSD Libraries will be able to provide access to multiple resources with duplicative or similar content after 2009.

Scopus currently indexes, selectively abstracts, and provides citation analysis since 1996 for nearly 18,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 4000 publishers, including approximately 1200 Open Access journals, and more than 240 published sets of conference proceedings, 550 trade publications, 430 million Web pages, and 23 million patent records. Although most comprehensive in the sciences, Scopus is currently expanding its coverage of the social sciences and humanities literature. Scopus provides searching tools that allow users to see an overview of desired search results and refine them to the most relevant hits. It also allows users to create alerts of new citations to previously constructed search queries and provides additional tools designed to support research collaboration and assess journal quality. Citations in Scopus are linked to full-text articles available at UCSD via UC eLinks.

Researchers interested in developing expertise in using Scopus are encouraged to go to Elsevier's Training Desk for links to online tutorials, videos, user guides, and other training materials.

UCSD's evaluation of Scopus is being coordinated by Jeff Williams, Head of Collections & Access Services at the Biomedical Library, who may be contacted at j12williams@ucsd.edu or at (858) 822-2218 for additional information and feedback.

Brian E. C. Schottlaender The Audrey Geisel University Librarian