Scopus
Elsevier's curated abstract and citation database — Web of Science's biggest rival, and broader in scope.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Coverage
27,000+ active peer-reviewed journals from 7,000+ publishers, plus conference papers, books, and patents; 90M+ records and 1.8B+ cited references (verify current counts).
- Access
Institutional subscription; a free Scopus Preview lets anyone search author and source profiles without full records.
- Free alternative
- OpenAlex
- Regional
Broader international and non-English coverage than Web of Science, though still English-leaning.
Our Take
Scopus is the broad, curated middle ground between Web of Science’s selectivity and Google Scholar’s everything-goes crawl — wider journal coverage than WoS, with vetted metadata and strong author disambiguation. It’s the citation database many institutions standardise on for research assessment, and its CiteScore, SJR, and SNIP metrics are widely used (and widely argued over). The trade-offs: it’s a paid Elsevier product, back-catalogue depth is thinner than WoS before 1996, and coverage decisions reflect Elsevier’s editorial priorities. Use it as your broad citation workhorse; pair it with WoS for pre-1996 depth and OpenAlex for open, global reach.
Power Tips
- Use the Author Identifier and affiliation profiles to disentangle common names before trusting an author’s output count.
- Export to CSV/RIS for systematic-review screening, and record your query and date for auditable PRISMA counts.
- Compare CiteScore against the journal’s SJR and SNIP — each normalises differently, so don’t rely on a single metric.
Alternatives & Complements
Web of Science, OpenAlex, Dimensions, Google Scholar
Figures last verified: June 15, 2026