Why Scopus?
Scopus was selected as the source for lists of University of Pennsylvania Health Sciences faculty publications for several reasons:
- Scopus is one of the largest databases for scientific literature in the world. It encompasses many of the other major databases in the health sciences, such as PubMed, EMBASE, and others.
- Scopus's system for identifying authors and the institutions with which they are affiliated is more comprehensive than those of most other databases.
- Scopus provides tools for customized HTML feeds of search results, which makes them easier to include on a web page for the Penn community.
Other Scopus features:
- Scopus includes article references for citations from 1996-present.
- Scopus indicates the number of times articles were cited, with links to citing articles.
- After clicking "Access All Results," the "Search Within Results" field can be used to search across the publications for that University of Pennsylvania Health Sciences School to identify research interests, collaborators, etc.
Are ALL of the publications by relevant Penn faculty listed in the feed?
Unfortunately, no. While the list in the Scopus feed should be very close to comprehensive, Penn publications may not be included for several reasons:
- Scopus's affiliation searching is powerful, but it does have its limits: authors aren't always matched with their schools or departments, or linked with their other publications. Penn librarians have constructed complex search strategies to capture as many publications from each School as possible without including unrelated citations.
- In other cases, publications might not appear because their citations are not in Scopus. While its scope is very broad and interdisciplinary, Scopus does not cover the literature in as much depth as do specialized health science databases: for example, CINAHL for nursing or CAB Abstracts for veterinary medicine.
- Scopus primarily indexes journal articles, while other databases like CINAHL and CAB Abstracts may include conference proceedings, books and book chapters, audiovisual materials, etc.
- Scopus may not include as many articles older than 1996 as do more specialized databases.
- While Scopus includes Medline citations, there may be a delay between the time when a citation appears in PubMed until it appears in Scopus.
- Scopus has a 100% overlap with Medline titles. The majority of those titles are also received directly via the publisher, however, approximately 20% of the Medline titles are fed directly from Medline into Scopus. As a result, these titles often have a delay in being loaded into Scopus, do not contain references and only the first author affiliation is available.
How can I create a feed like this?
Scopus provides instructions on how to build and proxy an HTML feed of search results here:
A more detailed set of step-by-step instructions is also available here:
Penn Librarians would be happy to help you to create a custom RSS feed or to construct a specific search strategy in Scopus. Please contact a librarian:
Search strategies used on these pages:
School of Dental Medicine
AFFIL(((("u* of pa" OR "u* of penn*" OR "university of pennsylvania") AND NOT (bloomsburg OR california OR cheyney OR clarion OR stroudsburg OR edinboro OR indiana OR kutztown OR "lock haven" OR mansfield OR millersville OR shippensburg OR "slippery rock" OR "west chester"))) AND (dent* OR "oral medicine" OR "leon levy" OR maxillo* OR endodont* OR schattner OR periodont* OR orthodont* OR "levy research"))
Perelman School of Medicine
(AFFIL((("u* of pa" OR "u* of penn*" OR {univ.pennsylvania}) AND NOT (bloomsburg OR california OR cheyney OR clarion OR stroudsburg OR edinboro OR indiana OR kutztown OR "lock haven" OR mansfield OR millersville OR shippensburg OR "slippery rock" OR "west chester" OR veterinary OR dental)) AND (sch* AND med*)) OR (AF-ID("University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine" 60003711))) OR (AFFIL(((univ* AND penn* AND health AND system) OR (hospital AND univ* AND penn*) OR (penn AND presbyterian AND medical AND center)) AND NOT (hershey OR jefferson OR pittsburgh OR temple)) OR AF-ID("University of Pennsylvania Health System" 60023009))
School of Nursing
AFFIL((("u* of pa" OR "u* of penn*" OR {univ.pennsylvania}) AND NOT (bloomsburg OR california OR cheyney OR clarion OR stroudsburg OR edinboro OR indiana OR kutztown OR "lock haven" OR mansfield OR millersville OR shippensburg OR "slippery rock" OR "west chester")) AND (nurs*)) OR AF-ID("University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing" 60102561) aaaa
School of Veterinary Medicine
AF-ID("University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine" 60031115) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE,"ar" ) OR LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE,"re" ) OR LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE,"ch" ) OR LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE,"ed" ) OR LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE,"ip" ) OR LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE,"bk" ) )
