Library video script: Scopus

• Scopus is a multidisciplinary database that you can use to find journal articles across a range of subject areas. To find out how to access Scopus from the Library website, please refer to the relevant tutorial.
• Once you have logged into Scopus, you will be taken to the Document Search screen. As an example I'm going to search for journal articles on the subject of Student Involvement in Environmentalism and Recycling.
• The Document Search screen gives you a single field to enter your search terms, but you can create additional fields to combine search terms by clicking add search field.
• I’m going to search for articles on my subject using the keywords students, recycling and universities. However by using the word recycling I won't find any articles that use associated words, such as recycle or recycled; to find these related terms I will need to truncate after the L. Similarly, I'm going to use truncation to search for both student and students. For more information on truncation please refer to the advanced database searching tutorial.
• You can see now how I'm going to use truncation in each of my search terms to maximise my results.
• Scopus divides its journal collections into four subject specific areas. For this example, I'm going to limit my search to the Social Sciences and Humanities collection, which you can do by ticking the appropriate box. Then click Search to retrieve your results.
• You can see that this has returned a reasonable amount of articles. But while my search will have found results using the term recycling, it may not have found articles about students and the environment or environmentalism.
• To amend your search click on the Edit option on the Your query bar at the top of the screen.  You'll be taken back to the original search screen where you can amend your search terms to expand or narrow down your results. In order to find articles which are related to recycling or the environment I need to type in both words and separate them with OR - again remembering to truncate the keywords to find different word endings. For more information on using alternative keywords please refer to the Advanced Database Searching tutorial.
• This time I've retrieved too many results to look through conveniently. Using the Edit option again, I can return to the search screen to further refine my search. The default option in Scopus searches within the article title, abstract and keywords, but if you click on the down arrow you will see that you can be more specific. I'm going to change the field so that it searches for my search terms within the title of the article only. By searching in the article title only, you may find that you have narrowed down your search too much, so use this option with caution.
• This search has returned a more manageable number of results, while finding articles relating to both recycling and the environment.
• To view more details about an article, click on the title for the full reference and the abstract, a short description of the contents of the article. To check if MMU Library has full-text access to an article, click on the Find It! @ MMU link. For more information on Find It! please consult the dedicated Find It! tutorial.
• If you need further help with any of our electronic library resources, please contact your local library, or refer to the other podcasts available on the MMU Library website and YouTube page.

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