Library News

SCOPUS — the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web resources (with 33 million records) — has smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize the literature of research. Now SCOPUS has added two new features that will greatly assist reseachers in choosing the best journal in which to publish research results.

The Scopus Journal Analyzer allows you to select up to 10 journals that you wish to compare in a specific field. The Journal Analyzer then presents three graphical representations of the journals:

• "Total citations" displays the number of citations the journals received annually.


• "Articles published" shows the number of articles published annually by each journal.


• "Trend lines" provides the number of citations received each year, regardless of the publication date of the cited document, divided by the total number of documents published in that year.

This feature enables researchers to identify the most influential journals in a subject area. The information provided is somewhat comparable to the impact factors found in Journal Citation Reports (JCR), but includes some journals not found in JCR. Information in the Analyzer updates every two months, so you can see where the journals stand right now. Data displayed can also be limited to a shorter time period than the default of 1996 to the present. A tutorial is available. For more information, you may view a comparison of Journal Analyzer and Journal Citation Reports.

The second new feature, SCOPUS TopCited, provides an at-a-glance overview of the 20 "top cited" articles across 26 subject areas over the past five years and shows where they were published. TopCited also discloses the authors, their affiliations, cited-by counts, and integrates this information on Google Maps, taking the first author's affiliation as the point of reference. As a UT Southwestern user of SCOPUS, you can click through to the abstract of each of the top 20 results and access the full text.

To get the most benefits from these new SCOPUS features, please register as a user (it's free). To locate SCOPUS on the Library Web site, click on "Quick Links" in the left sidebar and choose SCOPUS from the drop-down menu. For further information or assistance, contact Mary Ann Huslig by email or by phone at 214-648-3905.