Access to Scopus has Ended

by UB LIBRARIES

Published February 28, 2018

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Access to Elsevier’s Scopus database ended on March 1, 2018 for all SUNY institutions including the University at Buffalo. In essence, Elsevier gave SUNY an extended 3-year trial of Scopus when we renewed our SUNY contract for ScienceDirect. However, there is insufficient funding to continue our access to Scopus. We recognize that Scopus is a useful search platform. However, there are certain advantages to remaining with its main competitor, the Web of Science.

We encourage patrons to take a fresh look at Web of Science, which has greatly expanded its coverage of international and open access journals as well as improving its search interface. Advantages of the Web of Science include:

  • A much deeper back file, 1945 to present, than Scopus, which is most comprehensive only from 1996 to present.
  • Ability to determine citation-based metrics at the departmental level, not possible with Scopus.
  • Inclusion of addresses for all authors for approximately 98% of the articles, a higher percentage than in Scopus.
  • Unique ability to apply truncation (*) on the left side of a word stem to pick up prefixes, e.g., ‘*degrad*’ query will pick up ‘photodegradation’, ‘biodegrade’, etc.

Please contact your departmental liaison if you have any questions about this change.