Summary
The Elsevier Developer Portal provides documentation and support for Elsevier APIs, including the Scopus Search API, allowing users to search scientific literature and combine keywords with operators to produce more relevant results. The portal also offers tips and resources for using the API effectively. The page covers the basics of the Scopus Search API, including Boolean search syntax and URL encoding, as well as the importance of managing cookies for a seamless user experience.
Content
Scopus Search Guide
Search Language
SCOPUS Search API supports a Boolean syntax, which is a type of search allowing users to combine keywords with operators such as AND, NOT and OR to further produce more relevant results. For example, a Boolean search could be “heart” AND “brain”. This would limit the search results to only those documents containing the two keywords.
URL encoding
The Boolean search is submitted through the query string parameter ‘query’. As with all other query string parameters, the contents of the submitted search must be URL-encoded. It should be noted that the ’+’ character serves a special purpose as a query string value, functioning as an equivalent to the space character (i.e. %20). In order to submit a literal character ’+’ it must be properly URL-encoded (i.e. %2B).
| This search… | must be URL-encoded as: |
|---|---|
| KEY(mouse AND NOT cat OR dog) | KEY%28mouse+AND+NOT+cat+OR+dog%29 |
| KEY(cat AND dog AND NOT rodent OR mouse) | KEY%28cat+AND+dog+AND+NOT+rodent+OR+mouse%29 |
| DOI(“10.1021/es052595+“) | DOI%28%2210.1021%2Fes052595%2B%22%29 |
Example:
http://api.elsevier.com/content/search/scopus?query=DOI%28%2210.1021%2Fes052595%2B%22%29
Using boolean operators
You can use Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT) in your search. If you use more than one operator in your search, Scopus interprets your search according to the order of precedence. You can also use proximity operators (pre/n, w/n) with Boolean operators.
| AND | Finds only those documents that contain all of the terms. Use AND when all the terms must appear and may be far apart from each other. | Example | lesion AND pancreatic | | --- | --- | | Note | If you are searching for a phrase which contains the word “and,” omit the word “and” from your search. For example:profit loss finds the phrase “profit and loss” | | --- | --- | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OR | Finds documents that contain any of the terms. Use OR when at least one of the terms must appear (such as synonyms, alternate spellings, or abbreviations). |
| AND NOT | Excludes documents that include the specified term from the search. Use AND NOT to exclude specific terms. This connector must be used at the end of a search. | Example | ganglia OR tumor AND NOT malignant | | --- | --- | |
| Note | If you want to search for the words or, and, or and not literally, enter them in double quotation marks: “and”, “or”, “and not”. If you enter more than one word or phrase in the same text box without using an operator, AND is assumed. |
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Order of precedence rules
Searches with multiple operators are processed in the following order:
1. OR
2. AND
3. AND NOT
After the precedence rules are applied, the search is read left to right.
| All these searches… | are processed as… |
|---|---|
| KEY (mouse OR rat AND rodent) KEY (rodent AND rat OR mouse) KEY (rat OR mouse AND rodent) | KEY(mouseOR rat) AND rodent |
| This search… | is processed as… |
|---|---|
| KEY (mouse AND NOT cat OR dog) KEY (cat AND dog AND NOT rodent OR mouse) | KEY((mouse) AND NOT (cat OR dog)) KEY((cat AND dog) AND NOT (rodent OR mouse)) |
| Note | AND NOT can give unexpected results when you have multiple operators. We recommend that you put it at the end of your searches. For example, the following searches return a large number of results: KEY(cold) AND NOT KEY(influenza) KEY(cold) AND NOT KEY(influenza) AND KEY(rhinovirus) KEY(cold) AND NOT (KEY(influenza) AND KEY(rhinovirus)) To exclude influenza from your search, you should use the following search instead: KEY(cold) AND KEY(rhinovirus) AND NOT KEY(influenza) |
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Proximity operators
Scopus does not support using the operators (AND or AND NOT) as an argument to a proximity expression.
| Example | cat pre/10 (dog AND mouse) - invalid However, cat pre/10 dog AND mouse is valid because AND has a lower precedence, so the search is effectively (cat pre/10 dog) AND mouse |
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However, you can use the operator OR with a proximity operator.
| Example | (water OR vinegar OR wine) w/5 (oil OR yogurt) |
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Phrases
You can search for phrases in two ways depending on how exact a match you want to find. You can find an exact phrase or a loose or approximate phrase.
To search for an exact phrase
To find documents that contain an exact phrase, including any stop words, spaces, and punctuation, enclose the phrase in braces: {oyster toadfish}.
| Example | If you enter {oyster toadfish}, the search finds only documents that contain that exact phrase. In contrast, if you enter oyster toadfish, your search interprets that as “oyster AND toadfish” and finds documents containing both terms appearing separately or together. |
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| Note | Special characters are included in the search. | Example | Searching for {heart-attack} or {heart attack} returns different results because the dash (-) is considered in the search. | | --- | --- | Wildcards are searched as characters. | Example | Searching for {health care?} returns results such as: Who pays for health care?. | | --- | --- | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
To search for a loose or approximate phrase
To find documents where your search terms appear adjacent to each other, enclose the terms in double quotation marks: “cell behaviour”.
When you use double quotation marks:
AND is not automatically inserted between terms.
| Example | Entering “heart attack”returns different results than heart attack because the latter would be searched as heart AND attack, which would find documents that contained both words, even if they were far apart from each other. The search “heart attack” only finds documents where heart and attack are adjacent to each other. |
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Punctuation is ignored.
| Example | Entering “heart-attack” or “heart attack” returns the same results because the hyphen is ignored. |
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Wildcards are searched as wildcards.
| Example | Searching for “criminal* insan*” finds criminally insane and criminal insanity. |
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Plurals are included.
| Example | Searching for “heart attack” finds heart attack and heart attacks. |
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Double quotation marks can also be used to search specifically for stop words, special characters, or punctuation marks, which would otherwise be ignored. To search for the double quotation character itself, place a backslash before it and enclose those 2 characters in double quotation marks:
| Example | Searching for ”\"" finds “ |
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Wildcards
Use wildcard characters to search for variations of a word, making your search shorter and simpler. Multiple wildcard characters can be used.
| Use this wildcard… | To do this… |
|---|---|
| Question Mark (?) | Replace a single character anywhere in a word. Use one question mark for each character you want to replace. | Example | AFFIL(nure?berg) finds Nuremberg, Nurenberg | | --- | --- | |
| Asterisk (*) | Replace multiple characters anywhere in a word. | Example | behav* finds behave, behavior, behaviour, behavioural, behaviourism, etc. | | --- | --- | The asterisk replaces 0 or more characters, so it can be used to find any number or to indicate a character that may or may not be present. | Example | *tocopherol finds α-tocopherol, γ-tocopherol , δ-tocopherol, tocopherol, tocopherols, etc. | | --- | --- | |
| Note | Scopus finds variant spellings and matches Greek characters and their common American/British English variant spellings. |
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Field Restriction
You can search for a term in a specific field by entering the field name in your Advanced search:
field_name (search term)
| Example | The search TITLE-ABS-KEY(prion disease) returns documents where the terms appear in the title, keywords, or abstract. The search INDEXTERMS(prion disease)returns documents with the indexing term prion disease. |
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| Note | A limited number of field codes are available. Enter field codes in upper or lower case. Make sure to use the correct field code spelling, including hyphens. Not all documents contain all fields. Searching specific fields may prevent some articles from appearing in your search results. |
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@ = included in ALL fields search
| Code | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ALL | All Fields Searches the following fields: ABS, AFFIL, ARTNUM, AUTH, AUTHCOLLAB, CHEM, CODEN, CONF, DOI, EDITOR, ISBN, ISSN, ISSUE, KEY, LANGUAGE, MANUFACTURER, PUBLISHER, PUBYEAR, REF, SEQBANK, SEQNUMBER, SRCTITLE, VOLUME, and TITLE. | ALL(“heart attack”) returns documents with “heart attack” in any of the fields listed. |
| ABS @ | Abstract A summary of the document. | ABS(dopamine)returns documents where “dopamine” is in the document abstract. |
| AF-ID @ | Affiliation ID A unique identification number assigned to organizations affiliated with Scopus authors. | Note | You cannot search using just the affiliation name. For example entering AF-ID(“Harvard Medical School”) would not result in a match. Boolean operators cannot be used within the AF-ID field. | | --- | --- | | AF-ID(“Harvard Medical School” 3000604) or AF-ID(3000604) returns documents written by authors affiliated with Harvard Medical School and variants of that name stored in Scopus. |
| AFFIL @ | Affiliation When searching the AFFIL field, you can specify if you want all of your search terms to be found in the same affiliation. AFFIL is a combined field that searches the following author address fields: AFFILCITY AFFILCOUNTRY AFFILORG. The difference between using the field by itself and qualifying terms within subfields is that unqualified terms match against all author affiliations in a particular document and qualifying by subfields matches a specific author affiliation within the document (see example). | To find documents where your search terms occur in the same affiliation, use: AFFIL(london and hospital) or AFFIL(AFFILCITY(london) AFFILORG(hospital)) To find documents where both terms appear in a document’s affiliation, but not necessarily in the same affiliation, use: AFFIL (london) and AFFIL (hospital) |
| AFFILCITY | Affiliation city. The city portion of an author address. | AFFILCITY(beijing) returns documents where “beijing” is the city in the author affiliation fields, such as: Beijing Engineering Software Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing 100081, China |
| AFFILCOUNTRY | Affiliation country. The country portion of an author address. | AFFILCOUNTRY(japan) returns documents where “japan” is the country in the author affiliation fields, such as: Sojo University, Kumamoto 860-0082, Japan |
| AFFILORG | Affiliation organization. The organization portion of an author address. | AFFILORG(toronto)returns documents where “toronto” is the organization in the author affiliation fields, such as: Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont. M5S 3G3, Canada |
| ARTNUM @ | Article Number A persistent identifier for a document used by a few publishers instead of, or in addition to, page numbers. Article numbers can be assigned at the time of electronic publication, so documents can be cited and searched for earlier in the publication process. | ARTNUM(1)returns documents with article numbers, such as: art. no. 1 art. no. EGT-Nr 1.096 |
| AU-ID @ | Author Identifier Number A unique identification number assigned to Scopus authors. For more information, see Scopus Author Identifier. | Note | You cannot search the AU-ID field by entering an author name. For example entering AU-ID(“Sato, A.”) would not result in a match. Boolean operators cannot be used in the AU-ID field. | | --- | --- | | AU-ID(“Sato, A.” 100038831) or AU-ID(100038831) returns documents authored by Sato, A. and variants of that name stored in Scopus. |
| AUTHOR-NAME | Author Name The name of an author. This field finds variants for a single author name. AUTHOR-NAME is a combined field that searches the following author fields: AUTHLASTNAME AUTHFIRST AUTHSUFFIX AUTHNAME The difference between using the field by itself and qualifying terms within subfields is that unqualified terms match against all authors of the document and qualifying by subfields matches a specific author in the document (see example). | Note | A comma can be used to separate last name and first name. The terms will automatically be qualified as AUTHLASTNAME and AUTHFIRST, respectively (see example). | | --- | --- | | AUTHOR-NAME(carrera, s) returns documents with “carrera in the last name and s” in the first name for a specific author, including: Carrera, F S Carrera, S Carrera, S R Carrera, Samuele Carrera Daz, S Carrera Justiz, S C Dueas Carrera, S Snchez Carrera, S |
| AUTH @ | Author A combined field that searches the following author fields: AUTHLASTNAME AUTHFIRST | AUTH(jr) returns documents with “jr” in the last name and first initial fields, including: Finn Jr., C.E. Jenkins, J.R. |
| AUTHFIRST | Author first initial | AUTHFIRST(j) returns documents with “j” in the author first initial field, including: Yu, J. Paradi, J.C. Handelman, C.J. Da Costa, J.C.S |
| AUTHLASTNAME | Author last name (family name) | AUTHLASTNAME(barney) returns documents with “barney” in the author last name field. |
| AUTHCOLLAB @ | Collaboration Author The name by which a group of authors is known. | AUTHCOLLAB(“alpha group”) returns documents with “alpha group” in the collaboration field. |
| AUTHKEY | Author Keywords. Keywords assigned to the document by the author. | AUTHKEY(stroke)returns documents where “stroke” is an author keyword. |
| CASREGNUMBER | CAS registry number A numeric identifier assigned to a substance when it enters the CAS registry database. | CASREGNUMBER(1199-18-4)returns documents with “1199-18-4” in the CAS registry fields. |
| CHEM | Chemical A combined field that searches the CHEMNAME and CASREGNUMBER fields. | CHEM(oxidopamine)returns documents with “oxidopamine” in the chemical name or CAS registry number fields. |
| CHEMNAME @ | Chemical name | CHEMNAME(oxidopamine)returns documents with “oxidopamine” in the chemical name field. |
| CODEN @ | A unique, code that identifies serial and nonserial publications. | CODEN(rnene) returns documents in the specified publication. |
| CONF @ | Conference Information A combined field that searches information about a conference or a conference proceeding in the CONFNAME, CONFSPONSORS, and CONFLOC fields. | Note | A search for an article includes conference papers. | | --- | --- | | CONF(electrical transmission) returns documents such as: Proceedings of the Conference: Electrical Transmission in a New Age |
| CONFLOC | Conference location | CONFLOC(Tokyo)returns documents such as: Proceedings - Seventh International Conference on High Performance Computing and Grid in Asia Pacific Region, HPCAsia 2004; Tokyo; |
| CONFNAME | Conference name | CONFNAME(electrical transmission)returns documents such as: Proceedings of the Conference: Electrical Transmission in a New Age |
| CONFSPONSORS | Conference sponsors | CONFSPONSORS(IEEE)returns documents such as: IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings 2004 IEEE 6th Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing |
| DOCTYPE(XX) PUBSTAGE() | Document Type Possible values for XX are: | ar | Article | | --- | --- | | ab | Abstract Report | | bk | Book | | bz | Business Article | | ch | Book Chapter | | cp | Conference Paper | | cr | Conference Review | | ed | Editorial | | er | Erratum | | le | Letter | | no | Note | | pr | Press Release | | re | Review | | sh | Short Survey | PUBSTAGE Possible values are: | aip | Article in Press | | --- | --- | | final | Final Document | | (DOCTYPE(ar) OR PUBSTAGE(AIP))returns documents classified as articles or articles in press. |
| DOI @ | Digital Object Identifier (DOI) A unique alphanumeric string created to identify a piece of intellectual property in an online environment. | DOI(10.1007/s00202-004-0261-3)returns the document with the matching DOI. |
| EDFIRST | Editor first name (given name) | EDFIRST(michael) returns documents with “michael” in the first name field. |
| EDITOR @ | Editor A combined field that searches the following fields: EDLASTNAME and EDFIRST. | EDITOR(smith) returns documents with “smith” in the editor last name and first initial fields. |
| EDLASTNAME | Editor last name (family name) | EDITOR(smith) returns documents with “smith” in the editor last name field. |
| EISSN | Electronic International Standard Serial Number The ISSN of the electronic version of a serial publication. | EISSN(0-7623-106) or (07623106) returns documents containing “0762310669” as well as any other document containing single or multiple hyphens in any possible combination within “0-7623-106”. |
| EXACTSRCTITLE | Exact Source Title Searches the title of the journal, book, conference proceeding, or report in which the document was published. Exact source title searches do not find variations of your search termsonly sources that contain the exact words in your search are returned. | EXACTSRCTITLE(behavior)returns documents published in the source “Physiology and Behavior”, but not documents in the source “Addictive Behaviors”. |
| FIRSTAUTH | First Author The first author listed for a document. | FIRSTAUTH(Liming, T) returns documents with authors listed as ‘Liming, T., Mingan, S., Jiangzhong, Y., Zhenhua, T.’ The search does not return a document with authors listed as ‘Mingan, S., Jiangzhong, Y., Liming, T., Zhenhua, T.’, since Liming T. is not the first author in the author list. |
| FUND-SPONSOR | Funding sponsor. | FUND-SPONSOR(National Aeronautics and Space Administration) returns documents with National Aeronautics and Space Administration mentioned as the sponsor name in the acknowledgements section of the article. |
| FUND-ACR | Funding sponsor acronym. | FUND-ACR(NASA) returns documents with NASA mentioned as the sponsor acronym in the acknowledgements section of the article. |
| FUND-NO | Funding grant number. | FUND-NO(CDA-8619893) returns documents with CDA-8619893 mentioned as the grant number in the acknowledgements section of the article. |
| ISBN @ | International Standard Book Number A unique identification number assigned to all books. | ISBN(9780123456789)returns documents containing “9780123456789” as well as any other document containing single or multiple hyphens in any possible combination within “978-0-123-45678-9”. |
| ISSN @ | International Standard Serial Number A unique identification number assigned to all serial publications. | ISSN(0959-8278) or (09598278) returns documents containing “09598278” as well as any other document containing single or multiple hyphens in any possible combination within “0959-8278”. Searching on the ISSN field also searches the ISSNP and EISSN fields. |
| ISSNP | Print International Standard Serial Number The ISSN of the print version of a serial publication. | ISSNP(0-7623-106) or (07623106) returns documents containing “0762310669” as well as any other document containing single or multiple hyphens in any possible combination within “0-7623-106”. |
| ISSUE | Issue Identifier for a serial publication. | ISSUE(summer)returns documents with an issue identifier of “summer”. |
| KEY @ | Keywords A combined field that searches the AUTHKEY, INDEXTERMS, TRADENAME, and CHEMNAME fields. | KEY(oscillator)returns documents where “oscillator” is a keyword. |
| LANGUAGE @ | Language The language in which the original document was written. | LANGUAGE(french)returns documents originally written in French. |
| MANUFACTURER | Manufacturer | MANUFACTURER(sigma)returns documents with “sigma” in the keywords fields. |
| OPENACCESS | Open Access | OPENACCESS(1)returns Open Access content indexed in Scopus. OPENACCESS(0)returns subscription-based content indexed in Scopus. |
| PAGEFIRST | First page | PAGEFIRST(9)returns documents with page numbers, such as: 9 9-16 |
| PAGELAST | Last page | PAGELAST(9)returns documents with page numbers, such as: 9 9-16 |
| PAGES | Pages A combination field that searches the PAGEFIRST and PAGELAST fields. | PAGES(1-2)returns documents with a page number range of “1-2”. PAGES(9)returns documents with page numbers, such as: 1-9 9 9-16 |
| PMID | PubMed Identifier A unique identifier for all Medline documents. | PMID(10676951)returns documents that have a PubMed Identifier of “10676951”. |
| PUBLISHER @ | Publisher A text field indicating the name of the publisher. | PUBLISHER(Elsevier) returns documents published by “Elsevier”. |
| PUBYEAR | Year of Publication A numeric field indicating the year of publication. | Note | You can indicate the year using the following operators: < - Before > - After = - Equal to You can continue to use the older notation for the above 3 operators (BEF, AFT, and IS, respectively) in numeric fields; saved searches and alerts will continue to work as before. | | --- | --- | | PUBYEAR > 1994 returns documents with a publication year after 1994. PUBYEAR < 1994 returns documents with a publication year before 1994. PUBYEAR = 1994 returns documents with a publication year of 1994. |
| REF @ | References When searching the REF field, you can specify if you want all of your search terms to be found in the same reference. REF is a combined field that searches: REFAUTH REFTITLE REFSRCTITLE REFPUBYEAR REFPAGE | Note | REF search results include the URL of a website where applicable. | | --- | --- | | To find documents where your search terms occur in the same reference, use: REF(darwin 1859) To find documents where both terms appear in a document’s references, but not necessarily in the same reference, use: REF(darwin) and REF(1859) |
| REFAUTH | Reference authors. REFAUTH is a combined field that searches: REFAUTHLASTNAME REFAUTHFIRST | REFAUTH(Wu)returns documents with “Wu” in their reference author fields. |
| REFTITLE | Reference title | REFTITLE(dioxin)returns documents with “dioxin” in their reference title. |
| REFSRCTITLE | Reference source title | REFSRCTITLE(neuropharmacology) returns documents where “neuropharmacology” is in the source title of a reference. |
| REFPUBYEAR | Reference year A numeric field indicating the year of publication of a document reference. | Note | You can indicate the year using the IS operator. | | --- | --- | | REFPUBYEAR IS 1994 returns documents with references published in 1994. |
| REFARTNUM | Article Number A persistent identifier for a document used by a few publishers instead of, or in addition to, page numbers. Article numbers can be assigned at the time of electronic publication, so documents can be cited and searched for earlier in the publication process. | REFARTNUM(1)returns documents where “1” is in the article number of a document reference, such as: art. no. 1 rt. no. EGT-Nr 1.096 |
| REFPAGE | Reference page numbers | REFPAGE(75)returns documents where “75” is in the page numbering of a document reference, such as: pp. 71-75 75 pp. |
| REFPAGEFIRST | First Page | REFPAGEFIRST(5)returns documents where “5” is in the page numbering of a document reference, such as: pp. 854-879 pp. 5-7 |
| SEQBANK | Sequence Bank The name of the sequence bank that lists a nucleotide or amino acid sequence that is defined or mentioned in a document. | SEQBANK(GenBank)returns documents with “GenBank” in the keywords field. |
| SEQNUMBER | Sequence Bank Accession Number The number assigned to an amino acid or nucleotide sequence defined or mentioned in a document. | SEQNUMBER(AB013289)returns documents with “AB013289” in the keywords field. |
| SRCTITLE @ | Source Title The title of the journal, book, conference proceeding, or report in which the document was published. | SRCTITLE(pacific)returns documents with “pacific” in the source title, such as: Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health Pacific Conservation Biology 1989 Asia-Pacific Conference |
| SRCTYPE (XX) | Source Type Possible values for XX are: | j | Journal | | --- | --- | | b | Book | | k | Book Series | | p | Conference Proceeding | | r | Report | | d | Trade Publication | | SRCTYPE(j)returns documents from journal sources. |
| SUBJAREA(XX) | Subject Area Possible values for XX are: | AGRI | Agricultural and Biological Sciences | | --- | --- | | ARTS | Arts and Humanities | | BIOC | Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | | BUSI | Business, Management and Accounting | | CENG | Chemical Engineering | | CHEM | Chemistry | | COMP | Computer Science | | DECI | Decision Sciences | | DENT | Dentistry | | EART | Earth and Planetary Sciences | | ECON | Economics, Econometrics and Finance | | ENER | Energy | | ENGI | Engineering | | ENVI | Environmental Science | | HEAL | Health Professions | | IMMU | Immunology and Microbiology | | MATE | Materials Science | | MATH | Mathematics | | MEDI | Medicine | | NEUR | Neuroscience | | NURS | Nursing | | PHAR | Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics | | PHYS | Physics and Astronomy | | PSYC | Psychology | | SOCI | Social Sciences | | VETE | Veterinary | | MULT | Multidisciplinary | | SUBJAREA(CHEM)returns documents classified under the subject area Chemistry. |
| TITLE @ | Article Title The title of an article. | TITLE(“neuropsychological evidence”) returns documents with the phrase “neuropsychological evidence” in their title. |
| TITLE-ABS-KEY | A combined field that searches abstracts, keywords, and article titles. | TITLE-ABS-KEY(“heart attack”) returns documents with “heart attack” in their abstracts, article titles, or keyword fields. |
| TITLE-ABS-KEY-AUTH | A combined field that searches abstracts, article titles, keywords, and author names. | TITLE-ABS-KEY-AUTH(heart attack)returns documents with “heart attack” in their abstracts, article titles, keywords, or author name fields. | Note | You can search on the TITLE-ABS-KEY-AUTH field in a Document search. | | --- | --- | |
| TRADENAME | A name used to identify a commercial product or service. | TRADENAME(morbilvax) returns documents with “morbilvax” in the keywords fields. |
| VOLUME | Volume Identifier for a serial publication. | VOLUME(34) returns documents with a volume number of 34. |
| WEBSITE | The URL of a website cited in the reference. | WEBSITE (bbc.co.uk) finds documents with this URL in the references. |