Whether you are casting a wide net for a comprehensive search or trying to focus your search to a few key articles there are several techniques you can use in Scopus™ to get what you need.

To narrow a search use specific search terms:

• Choose terms closely related to your topic: antiemetic agents (broad) versus a specific drug (narrow).
• Try searching alternative words, synonyms, and abbreviations of your term.
• Avoid words that are too general, such as bioethics, behavior, or cancer.
• Remember a single character is treated as a whole word and can be combined with other terms to narrow your search. For example: α will be searched as a term.
• To search specifically for a special character or punctuation mark, enclose it in double quotes. For example: “Ω”.
• Use double quotation marks around search terms to search as an exact phrase. For example: “oyster toadfish” will get fewer results than oyster toadfish.

Your search is NOT case-sensitive. It does not matter whether you use capital or lower-case letters. To broaden your search you can use wildcards.

• Use a question mark (?) to replace a single character or letter. For example: analy?e will find analyse and analyze.
• Use an asterisk (*) to replace multiple characters or letters (zero or more) anywhere in a search term. For example: behav* will find behavior, behave, behavioural, behaviour, behaviourism.

A singular term also finds the plurals of the term.

• Using the singular word form will retrieve the singular, plural, and possessive forms of most words. For example: If you enter criterion you will also locate criteria.
• Only one wildcard can be used in a single search term.

To access Scopus, click on the new Scopus link under Quick Links on the left side of the website or click on Databases from the Research Tools drop-down options. Scopus is listed alphabetically, near the bottom of the page.

For more information about using Scopus, call the Information Desk at 301-496-1080; or email your Informationist.

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