From Dimensions to Lens, from Scopus to Web of Science, from Google Scholar to Semantic Scholar, there simply isn't one location from which we can harvest all scholarly and popular output. Compiling a list of departmental publications is a challenging task, one which must balance comprehensiveness with time spent on the task. We use Scopus in our tutorial below, which is a useful starting point, but any departmental or research center coordinator should expect to supplement this work with other databases and methods.
Scopus is an abstract and citation database. It grabs citations from a long list of journals, books in a series, preprints, and more. But Scopus is not strong at indexing monographs – standalone books. This means that disciplines in which the monograph is still a main publication type may not be well-suited to working in Scopus – including many humanities-based disciplines. Scopus also does not contain book reviews. And while Scopus does contain many conference papers, notably in engineering and computer science, most conference papers and abstracts will not be picked up in other disciplines by Scopus.
If a researcher's work has been separated into multiple entries in Scopus, it's best to include all of them in your author list. Make sure each of those entities represents the correct person, and not a different person with the same name.
This tutorial will walkthrough creating a list of publications from the standing faculty of Penn’s Department of Psychology, for all documents published in 2022.
This tutorial uses Scopus. To perform the steps below, you will need to create a free Elsevier account. This will enable you to save lists and export batch documents.
To generate a list of all publications from a given entity, like a department or research center, first you need to assemble a list of all researchers from that entity. In Scopus, you can do this by creating a Saved Author List. Make sure you are signed in so that your list is saved.
While this process is lengthy, the bulk of the work is done at once, and you only need to maintain the list with updates as researchers join or leave the center.
To start a new Saved Author List, begin by searching for a researcher in your department of interest. We’ll search for Coren Apicella. In Scopus, select the Authors tab, and type in your researcher’s name.
Check off the box for the correct author, and then select Save to Author List from the search menu.
Enter the name of a New List, then click Save list.
After the list is created, you’ll continue to add additional researchers to the list by selecting Save to Author List, then Select from your Saved Lists.
Once you have all researchers of your department or research center entered into a list, you can view all documents by those researchers.
To get to your saved lists, click on your profile icon in the upper right, and select Saved lists.
Click on the Authors tab, then select your list.
Scroll down to the bottom of your list to make sure all authors are displayed on the page. Change the display number to a figure greater than the number of researchers in your list.
Select the checkbox to check off all researchers, then choose Show documents from the menu options.
You should now see the total number of publications produced by your research unit.
To look at publications from a specific year, use the limits on the left. Select the year(s) you want to see, then choose the Limit to button.
Your list should now include only publications from your research area created during the year or years you specified.
To export your list, you have two options. If there are fewer than 2,000 documents, you can create a quick bibliography from within Scopus. On the results screen, select All documents using the checkbox, then choose the three dots (. . . ) in the menu, and select Create Bibliography. The following screen will allow you to choose your preferred citation style and export format (PDF, HTML…).
Alternatively, you can choose the All checkbox and select Export, and send your citations to your preferred citation manager, or download as a CSV or RIS file.
No – but you can grab the author ID list that you generated and send it to others. After showing all documents, go to Query and click Edit, then copy the whole list, then proceed with step 3.
This tutorial will walkthrough creating a list of publications from the standing faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychology, for all documents published in 2022.
This tutorial uses OpenAlex. Although you do not need to create an account to perform a search or export data, creating a free account allows you to create alerts for new content and to save your queries in a single location.
First, you need to build a list of all researchers for the entity you are interested in. Once the initial search is saved, you can update the list when needed.
Navigate to the OpenAlex Works Search page.
Add filters by clicking on the blue plus sign:
Select the Author Filter in the Dropdown Menu:
In the window that pops open, type the last name of the person you are looking for. You may need to add the first name or first initial if you cannot find the person you are looking for. To aid your search, the current affiliation is listed with each possible researcher.
In the picture above, Coren L. Apicella (towards the middle of the list) is associated with the University of Pennsylvania and part of our list from the Department of Psychology.
To add more authors to your search, click on the dark grey plus sign at the right end of the filter box. This allows you to have an “OR” search.
Some caveats are:
In the upper left-hand of the screen there is a drop-down menu where you can Save As for the current search.
In the “Save search” Box enter a name and optionally a description of the search.
To get to your saved search, click on the Unsaved search dropdown in the upper left-hand corner.
On the right-hand side above the Stats box there is a grey plus, you can add an author breakdown report by selecting author from the pop-up box.
A box is added to the bottom of the Stats list showing the authors and the number of works.
For more details you can select “More…” at the bottom of the box. You can also click on the three vertical dots to download a JSON or CSV file of the results.
To look at publications from a specific year, simply add a filter on the year using that blue plus symbol.
Enter the year or range of years you are interested in the prompt.
The search will update the results with the new set of filters.
To download all the works associated with your author list, click on the download icon above the Works box.
There are several formats that the results can be exported in. You can select your preferred output and start the export.
Yes! The URL that is built by your search is effectively an API call. You can copy and paste the URL to share the list.
Example:
The URL can be quite long and involved but contains all the information needed to rebuild a report.
