how to download research papers from scopus

• My extensions & themes
• Developer Dashboard
• Give feedback

Scopus Document Download Manager

238 ratings

Scopus authenticated users can download PDF files directly from Scopus!

This extension only works for Scopus authenticated users. The Scopus download manager will not do anything for unauthenticated users. Scopus Document Download Manager is a free browser extension enabling download functionality in Scopus, as well as a Quick Document Search function for Scopus authenticated users. To search, authenticated users can simply click on the browser extension icon to display the search form. This extension saves authenticated users the hassle of visiting individual publisher web sites to download documents one by one. Instead, it seamlessly connects to publisher websites to download full text PDFs directly from your browser without needing to configure and maintain a list of entitlements. How do you use this extension in Scopus? 1) From the document search results or document list pages, select one or several documents and click on Download button or 2) From a Scopus abstract record page, click on Download button When successfully downloaded, your PDF document(s) will be saved to your browser Downloads folder. In the event that the extension fails at retrieving the PDF (e.g. you are not entitled to the full text or the download is prevented by the publisher web site) the Document Download Manager will provide a link to the publisher web site so you can easily open the page and try to download the full text manually.

1.9 out of 5 238 ratings Google doesn't verify reviews. Learn more about results and reviews.

Ilias Kyriazakis Aug 22, 2024

This is totally useless. It does not work

Paul Bogere Apr 12, 2024

Fake, it doesn't work at all

Nishanth P Apr 5, 2024

Useless. Doesn't work.

• Version 4.00
• Updated June 22, 2024
• Report a concern
• Size 380KiB
• Languages English (United States)
• Developer Website Email [email protected]
• Non-trader This developer has not identified itself as a trader. For consumers in the European Union, please note that consumer rights do not apply to contracts between you and this developer.

This developer declares that your data is

• Not being sold to third parties, outside of the approved use cases
• Not being used or transferred for purposes that are unrelated to the item's core functionality
• Not being used or transferred to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes

For help with questions, suggestions, or problems, visit the developer's support site

Science Research Assistant

Search for scientific information as quickly as possible while researching and writing scientific papers.

SciSpace: Do hours of research in minutes

Your AI research assistant for understanding scientific literature.

ExCITATION journal ranking in Google Scholar™

Find quality sources in a shorter time (journal ranking), identify leading studies (sort by citation), and preview abstracts

Writefull for Overleaf

Writefull is automated proofreading for academic writing. This version of Writefull provides support for Overleaf.

Mendeley Web Importer

Fast, convenient import of references and PDFs to your Mendeley Reference Manager library.

This extension lets you save articles to MyLOFT

Google Scholar Button

Lookup scholarly articles as you browse the web.

Zotero Connector

Save references to Zotero from your web browser

Rapid Journal Quality Check

Displays rankings and h-index for academic journals next to Google Scholar search results.

Google Scholar PDF Reader

Supercharge your paper reading: follow references, skim outline, jump to figures, cite and save.

Knovel Browser Extension

Trusted results from wherever you are on the web, from Knovel, an Elsevier product

EndNote Click

Fast, one-click access to millions of research papers.

Scopus Help Guide

Table of Contents

Database information: scopus, searching scopus.

• Accessing Full Text
• Exporting Results from Scopus

Saving Results/Personal Account in Scopus

Auto alerts in scopus, scopus tutorials.

Scopus and Manifold

Scopus is an extensive abstract and citation database that provides comprehensive coverage of peer-reviewed journals, books, conference abstracts, and patents across the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Using Scopus, you can:

Create customized searches for peer-reviewed literature across many disciplines

• View citations to journal articles
• Access the full text of documents provided by subscriptions through the University Libraries
• View profiles for authors indexed by Scopus, which include measures of scholarly impact like h-index and publication counts

This wealth of available data makes Scopus useful for searching for literature that can help you with your research and determining the impact of scholarly works. 

Searching in Scopus

You can search Scopus for documents, authors, and affiliations, as well as create advanced searches customized to your needs.

Searching for documents On the Scopus home page, you can search for documents based on search terms provided in article titles, keywords, publication names, and many other facets. To begin, enter your search terms in the field provided and use the dropdown box to specify which fields to search.   

You can repeat this process to include additional search terms in different fields. You also have the option to specify date range, document type, and subject areas for the returned results. When you complete your search, the results are presented in a list as shown below.

From this view, you can sort results, refine the results, export and download records, and access complete records for publications. Clicking on a result title opens the full Scopus record for the publication. To access the full text of a record, you can click the Full Text Options to get to the Find It or View at Publisher buttons.

Searching for authors To search for authors, click the Author search tab above the search box. 

Here you can search for authors and documents they have published based on name, keyword, and even ORCID . 

You can also narrow your search by exact matches only or by limiting results to specified subject areas. Each author returned in the results list links to a page that profiles their publications and citations as well as provides measures of their scholarly impact.

Searching for affiliations To search for affiliations (i.e., institutions), click the Affiliation search tab above the search box. 

Here, you can search by institution name, such as University of Minnesota.

Results from this search link to affiliation profiles that provide access to documents and authors associated with the respective institution. In addition, these profiles provide some statistics of an affiliation’s scholarly output, including documents by subject area, documents by publication source, and collaborating institutions.

Creating advanced searches Scopus provides the option of creating advanced searches to customize the results that are returned. To do this, click the Advanced search tab above the search box. 

In this page, you are provided a text box where you can specify all the parameters of your search using the field codes listed.

Getting full text

When using Library resources, the FindIt link is your connection to accessing the full text of articles if a PDF link is not already visible.

This short video will show you how to get to the articles you need for your research paper or other University of Minnesota assignments. Never pay for articles! If we don't have it online, request it and we will get it for you. 

Exporting Results From Scopus

Scopus allows you to export results lists (including all search results, ‘My Lists’ and ‘Saved Lists’), documents and documents references. These can be exported either to a file or a reference management tool (e.g. EndNote, Zotero).

• Select the document or documents you would like to export .
• Click the ‘ Export ’ link. A list of file or reference management tools will appear. 
• If this is the first time you are exporting , select your reference management tool or file type.
• Once you choose your file type or reference management tool, an export options box will appear.  Choose what citation information you want to export.  You can also save this template as a preference. Then click Export.
• Your export begins.

Personal account

You can create an Elsevier account for free.   With an Elsevier account you can save a search from any documents results list, or from within your current search history.

• Run a document search or an advanced search . A document search results page opens.
• From your document search results, click ‘ Save search’ which appears to the left of your search results. The "Save this search" popup opens.
• From within the Save this search popup, enter a name for the new Saved search .
• Click ‘ Save ’. Your search is saved and can be accessed by clicking on the Saved Searches link located above the Search History.

If you are not signed into Scopus, you have the option to add selected documents from your results list to a temporary session-based list.   When you sign out of Scopus, the documents in your temporary list are deleted.  If you are signed into Scopus, you have the option to save documents to a list which may be accessed anytime you are signed into Scopus.  You can rename, edit, delete, add documents to, or export your lists of documents in Scopus account. These lists are available any time when you sign in to Scopus and can be modified or exported according to your research needs.

You can setup and manage alerts in Scopus

• From the Set search alert page or Set Alert pop-up, enter a ‘Name of alert’ .
• In ‘ E-mail address’ , enter the email address for alert notifications. This field automatically displays the email address entered when you first registered to use Scopus. You can also enter email addresses of colleagues. Separate multiple email addresses with a semicolon, comma, or space, or press ‘ Enter’ on your keyboard. If a colleague unsubscribes from the alert, you will receive an email informing you of the action.
• From ‘ Frequency’ , select how often you want to receive alert email notices. For weekly alerts you can choose which day of the week you receive the alert, and for monthly alerts you can choose which day you receive the alert. Note: If there are no new documents matching your alert criteria during the time-frame or frequency you choose, you will not receive an alert.
• Click on "set search alert" to save the alert.
• Once you have created your Alert, it can be accessed on the Alert page.  On that page you can select ‘ Active’ or ‘ Inactive’ as the status of your alert. You can change this setting on the Alerts page without losing your frequency preferences. Setting an alert to ‘ Inactive’ status does not delete the alert.

Scopus Tutorials : Scopus tutorials provide a visual tour of Scopus and its functions, but are without sound. The tutorials below are also found in the relevant FAQs in the Scopus Support Center.

Scopus Tutorial: How to conduct a basic search (2022 July 12): 3:10 min

Scopus Tutorial: How to use advanced search (2022 July 13): 3:04 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to Expand Your Search (2022 July 13): 2:32 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to Create Citation Overview (2022 July 22): 2:48 min

Scopus Tutorial: Understand how author profiles work (2022 July 21): 2:14 min.

Scopus Tutorial: How to save searches and set alerts (2022 July 13): 2:13 min.

Scopus is useful for learning and research. Beyond serving as simply a citation index, however, it is also useful for assessing scholarly impact. As a result, data from Scopus form the foundation for Manifold , one of the University's research impact tracking systems.

What is Manifold? Manifold is a web-accessible interface that generates profiles and reports of research impact and scholarly output for faculty and departments in the University of Minnesota Medical School. Built in response to emerging expectations and needs around faculty scholarship, Manifold harvests publication data from Scopus, including citation counts, to provide metrics of research impact and productivity for Medical School faculty and departments. In addition, Manifold provides an easy mechanism for identifying nominees for the Wall of Scholarship , which showcases research excellence among Medical School faculty. As more needs around assessment emerge at the University, the system continues to be enhanced to meet new demands on the data that Scopus provides on faculty scholarship.

For more information about Manifold, please consult the Manifold Frequently Asked Questions page.

• All Solutions

Expertly curated abstract & citation database

About Scopus

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.

As research becomes increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative, you can make sure that critical research from around the world is not missed when you choose Scopus.

“Speed is very important … I can easily identify what I need to know, read it, digest it and move on to the next one.” James, Research Pathologist, Medical Device R&D, Scopus user

“Scopus is very customer-friendly… You get more information from all different fields. It saves a lot of time.” Chris, Head of R&D, Diagnostic Testing, Scopus user

“Scopus informs every phase of the editorial process. I would not want to do this job without it, and I intend to continue using it throughout my career.” William, Professor of Economics, University of Tennessee

More information (in English)

• Why I would not want to be without Scopus; an editor’s story
• NASI Scopus Young Scientists Awards 2019

Elsevier.com visitor survey

We are always looking for ways to improve customer experience on Elsevier.com. We would like to ask you for a moment of your time to fill in a short questionnaire, at the end of your visit . If you decide to participate, a new browser tab will open so you can complete the survey after you have completed your visit to this website. Thanks in advance for your time.

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Is there a simple way to bulk download a large number of papers from a list of references

I've got a library of 1200 references I'm using for a systematic review. Now I need to download the PDFs of all these references, which will take days if I do it manually. Is there a simple way to automatically download as many as possible from pubmed / Google Scholar / (maybe Scihub)? I have institutional access.

Edit: My solution was to load the reference list into multiple reference managers and run the PDF import function in all of them. Some managers succeeded where others failed. I had to do the rest manually.

• reference-managers

• Did you try to ask your librarian? –  EarlGrey Commented May 24, 2023 at 11:56
• 2 If you want to do a systematic review of these 1200 works I suspect you would need to read at the very least the abstract but presumably significant parts of the text in each of them. Relative to that effort, the downloading is completely trivial. –  quarague Commented May 24, 2023 at 12:43

2 Answers 2

For systematic review, if you're following PRISMA, you'll typically do some preliminary 'checks' before getting to the lists for full text review.

I'm assuming the 1200 odd references are your final list after the duplicate removal and screening, and perhaps your forward-and-reverse literature chaining.

In Zotero, you can enable automatic PDF download in preference. For your purpose, you then bulk import reference using doi or bibtex or ris .

• Someone recently developed a working script for bulk adding doi and updating metadata

The trick with Zotero is that Zotero is able to download pdf link to an entry from multiple sources. There are limitations though. Beware that most academic database would lock you out if performing large bulk downloads at fast rate. Always a good idea to use proxy. In your case, you already having institutional access which might assist.

With Endnote, you can bulk import PDF files or like you have in Mendeley, you can set a 'watch' on a folder from which Endnote will automatically import entries for PDF files added to the folder. Unfortunately, that does not address your challenge. With Endnote, similar to Zotero, you can import reference list to populate tour Endnote database.

• simply export reference list from your search (Google, Scopus ...) to a RIS file.

[Technical approach beyond the scope of Academia forum] For other technical solutions beyond the scope of Academia, you can work directly with API of academic database.

• Science direct and Scopus provide API access, which you register for for free. You'll still need access to perform low-level tasks and download.
• you can leverage Python to work with academic database API
• for Google Scholar, use Scholarly: Scholarly pypi , GitHub
• for Scopus, pybliometrics is well used.
• Pyscopus claims to be more friendly. I'm yet to use Pyscopus unlike others. More so, it's inactive since 2019!

There's one I've used recently, just can't recall the name offhand. It allows robust analysis and topic search. I'll update in due course.

[Scientific PDF download]

• RESP: Research Papers Search claims to search and download scientific papers. Yet to try it out.
• Articledownloader is worth exploring
• PyPaperBot is well used for downloading scientific articles from DOI or academic database.

I'm busy with a fork of Automated Search Helper . A research project by Lech Madeyski team at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland. I'm yet to upload latest revision which has the

• pdf downloader working with JSGlue, Jinja2
• I have it working locally but need some code clean-up and documentation.

NB: with automatic downloaders, beware of captcha and blocking/ban by academic database

SciPDFParser comes across as a good parser of downloaded articles PDF.

I don't know of any tool to specifically scrape academic databases for pdf's. There may be some obscure program out there on GitHub or a web-crawler that could be repurposed. This question is a bit dated but addresses your problem in more detail and proposes some interesting solutions in that vein.

The easiest off the shelf solution is Endnote. It has a feature that allows for automatic search and retrieval of pdf's. If you have access, it works fairly well. Though it doesn't capture everything . I suspect that there are other reference managers with a similar feature. I don't know of free ones specifically, if that is a concern.

If none of those options are workable for you, consider if it is necessary to download all those pdf's. I'm assuming that you are just beginning to conduct your screening and so you likely don't need the full texts right away. I have conducted a handful of systematic reviews and I have always relied on title and abstract for the initial screen. If I could not make a decision from that info, simply navigating to the original online version was sufficient. Since you already have institutional access, why store them on your local device from the get-go? It would be significantly easier to download and store the papers you flag for further review or inclusion. This may not be right in your case, but it's something to consider if all else fails.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged citations reference-managers sci-hub pubmed ..

• Featured on Meta
• Bringing clarity to status tag usage on meta sites
• We've made changes to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy - July 2024
• Announcing a change to the data-dump process

Hot Network Questions

• Historical U.S. political party "realignments"?
• How can I get the Thevenin equivalent of this circuit?
• Question on a min inequality
• What prevents a browser from saving and tracking passwords entered to a site?
• Using \tl_put_right with grouping from latex3 explsyntax
• Regression techniques for a “triangular” scatterplot
• Parody of Fables About Authenticity
• Too many \setmathfont leads to "Too many symbol fonts declared" error
• Parse Minecraft's VarInt
• How can judicial independence be jeopardised by politicians' criticism?
• Reusing own code at work without losing licence
• Dress code for examiner in UK PhD viva
• Image Intelligence concerning alien structures on the moon
• Cannot open and HTML file stored on RAM-disk with a browser
• A short story about a boy who was the son of a "normal" woman and a vaguely human denizen of the deep
• I overstayed 90 days in Switzerland. I have EU residency and never got any stamps in passport. Can I exit/enter at airport without trouble?
• What unique phenomena would be observed in a system around a hypervelocity star?
• Why is Legion helping you whilst geth are fighting you?
• Maximizing the common value of both sides of an equation
• Can you give me an example of an implicit use of Godel's Completeness Theorem, say for example in group theory?
• Where to donate foreign-language academic books?
• 2 in 1: Twin Puzzle
• How can I prove the existence of multiplicative inverses for the complex number system
• Is it possible to calculate FPS (frames per second) of video using statistical data?

Unfortunately we don't fully support your browser. If you have the option to, please upgrade to a newer version or use Mozilla Firefox , Microsoft Edge , Google Chrome , or Safari 14 or newer. If you are unable to, and need support, please send us your feedback .

We'd appreciate your feedback. Tell us what you think! opens in new tab/window

Welcome to Elsevier Connect

News, information and features for the research, health and technology communities

In the spotlight

Not alone: leaders in focus.

Uncover unfiltered perspectives on global issues by research and academic leaders.

Featured articles:

Evidence-based assessment, equity and opportunity

Universities must be catalysts for sustainable development

Turning the supertanker: How do we steer research universities (even more) towards impact?

Leadership diversity: Living your values at the highest levels

Partnering for an open future: Sharing successes and lessons learned

Hear from library leaders on the institutional impact of transformative agreements and discover more about achieving sustainable open access.

Latest articles

Sustainable development in the age of AI

Future-proofing the workforce in engineering R&D

Encouraging innovation and commercialization as an academic leader

If you want your research to have impact, don’t underestimate the power of communication

Elsevier connect communities and topics.

Sustainability

Open science

Gender & Diversity

Healthcare & Medicine

Library Connect

Editors' Update

Reviewers' Update

Authors' Update

Research leadership

Researchers

Data & Analytics

Five great reasons to showcase your societal impact

Meet the journals breaking the traditional research article mold

Manuscript rejected? Five insider tips to see you to success

Seven top tips on stopping APC scams

Beware of fraudulent emails requesting payment

Breaking down barriers: perspectives on why good research communication is a must

Five things every researcher should know about image manipulation

How two insure your on track four publication: the importance of good manuscript language

In the eye of the beholder

The importance of remaining accountable

Location, location, location - where to get published

CRediT where credit's due

Never miss out on a special issue again

Finding the best journal for a paper

The lasting language of publication? - Part II

The lasting language of publication?

Eight lessons from the webinar "article to art: creating visual abstracts"

Ten essential tips to ensure the integrity of your research

Announcing the new “Evaluate Manuscript”

Top tips on identifying citation misconduct

Journal editors and reviewers need to evaluate papers on scientific merit, not language

Four ways you can use the Elsevier Privacy Center: How Elsevier provides transparency for your personal data

Meet the woman who’s tracking down systematic research fraud

Paper mills: see the wood for the trees (Part 1)

Paper mills: see the wood for the trees (part 2), paper mills: see the wood for the trees (part 3).

101 ways to use Scopus – part one

101 ways to use scopus – part two, clarification of our policy on prior publication.

It’s a tie! How to deal with conflicting recommendations from reviewers

Tips & tricks for managing the peer review process with Editorial Manager - Part 2

Tips & tricks for managing the peer review process with editorial manager - part 3.

Running on empty? How to deal with an article shortage

Paving the way to increase diversity in journals – and research

Something to declare?

Editor in a (60-second) spotlight – Stelvia Matos

Perspectives on peer review: insights from industry experts

Recap and recent enhancements to Find Reviewers

Peer review: how exactly do I do that?

Ten reasons to accept your (next) invitation to review

Two heads are better than one: working with a co-reviewer

How to tackle your first review

Recognition innovation: enabling peer review activity integration with ORCID

Want to become a certified peer reviewer?

Introducing Reviewer Hub

Our reviewer volunteer journey

Societies' update.

Societies and their journals walking the talk on the road to equity

3 ways professional societies can boost impact through collaboration

Data-driven journal feedback is a gift

Lights, cameras, action — and more! Tips for improving your author and editor videos

How IBRO revamped its journals to better serve the global neuroscience community

Creative ways to celebrate journal and society anniversaries

Three steps to implementing DEI across your professional society

Flipping to open access: How a future-focused society switched publishers and business models

Why open access can offer different possibilities for societies

Societies’ update, learn how elsevier is supporting open science.

tree-logo-small-v2.png

• Research trends reports
• Tips & Tricks

You are here

Search this blog, get our newsletter.

Follow Scopus

• Content (59)
• Metrics (44)
• Release (36)
• Tips and Tricks (26)
• SciVal (18)

Recent Posts

Introducing copilot, a new feature for scopus ai to handle specific and complex queries.

• Meet the CSAB: Professor & Subject Chair Henry Wai-chung Yeung
• CiteScore 2023: A comprehensive, clear and current metric for journal impact
• Scopus AI Release: May 2024
• Enhancements to Citation Overview on Scopus

Blog post CoPilot images.png

To address this need, we’re pleased to introduce the first in a lineup of new features for Scopus AI called Copilot, which is designed to optimize responses to highly specific or complex queries. Copilot uses both keyword and vector search tools, employing more and varied types of search technology to better process specialized queries and provide more specific responses. 

Here's how Copilot works:  

• Copilot looks at the content of your query and decides whether to run a vector search and/or keyword search   
• It then ensures complex queries are broken down into their component parts and are optimized for the search channels it has chosen to use ; for example, for the keyword search it adds Boolean operators  
• In doing so, it considers more abstracts than the previous search   

As a result of this process, Copilot can break down more complex queries into their individual components and optimize each element for either vector or keyword search. This means users can pose more complicated or multifaceted questions, and Copilot will be able to sift through the different aspects to produce the best possible results.  

Support of non-English queries 

We realize exploring a new topic area can be difficult enough if English is your first language. But if English isn’t your native language , delving into new subjects can be even more challenging. To address this issue, Copilot also includes an intelligent language layer , which can take a query in a non-English language and translate it into English, which is the language many researchers say they prefer to work in.  

Copilot improves Scopus AI in other ways, including: 

• Automatic correcting of spelling mistakes to provide the clearest responses possible  
• Processing of longer text queries , including full abstracts 
• Expanding the number of search results Scopus AI provides - up from 10 in the summary and 20 in the expanded summary to a new upper limit of 30

In line with Elsevier’s Responsible AI principles, Copilot provides a unique transparency layer that explains exactly how the tool is breaking down and optimizing your query. This is a unique feature among GenAI solutions currently on the market, and another step towards refining this exciting new tool. 

The research community has been closely involved in every step of the Scopus AI development process, and the introduction of Copilot has also been the result of customer feedback. Testing and offline evaluation has shown Copilot greatly improves the quality of the results produced and enables Scopus AI to support a wider range of queries, from highly niche to very broad.

With Copilot, we hope to provide an even more nuanced and specialized view into the evolving world of academic research.  

Copyright © 2024 or its licensors and contributors. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

• Scopus: Access and use Support Center

To post social content, you must have a display name. The page will refresh upon submission. Any pending input will be lost.

• Support Center
• Using the product

How do I find Open Access documents and journals in Scopus?

You can locate Open Access (OA) journals and/or articles by conducting a Document search , Advanced search , or using the Scopus Sources feature. Any search result providing documents or sources that are considered OA, indicate they are Open Access below the title.

Open Access refers to journals and articles in which all peer reviewed scholarly articles are online and available without restrictions.

Open Access (OA) filters are available in Scopus and Scopus API to provide greater clarity and a breakdown of the type of Open Access per document. There are currently ~17 million articles in Scopus using this Open Access classification system and Scopus is planning to expand its definition of Open Access to include those available in open repositories.

How do I find and filter Open Access documents?

• Perform a Document search . The Document search results page opens.
• All Open Access: All documents that fall within any of the Scopus Open Access filters.
• Gold: Documents are in journals which only publish open access.
• Hybrid Gold: Documents are in journals which provide authors the choice of publishing open access.
• Bronze: Bronze status is assigned to a document if there is another (publisher-specific) license other than a Creative Commons license (such as Elsevier’s publisher license for Open Archive), or no license at all.
• Green: Documents may be available as gold or other free-to-read forms on the publisher platform.
• Select 'Limit to' . The Document search results list updates and the Open Access indicator appears below each Open Access title.

Where are the Open Access definitions derived from?

The Scopus source for OA documents is Unpaywall , a database run by Impactstory (a non-profit organization) which harvest Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories.

Which Open Access filters are supported in Scopus?

Where can I find the Open Access indicators and filters?

You can filter results on the Documents Results page filter panel. You can filter by all Open Access documents or by each of the OA tags: gold, hybrid gold, green and bronze.

From the Scopus Advanced search, the OA filters are found under the Document field code section. The values, in combination with the OA field code, allow users to build queries using the OA filters.

The Advanced search page also allows you to search for Green Final and Green Accepted OA documents if there is a need for a more granular view of Green OA documents. Green Final and Green Accepted OA filters are not available on the Document search results page filter panel.

Advanced Search queries with OA filter examples

You can search Gold Open Access articles only and add a Boolean operator to search for other field codes like ABS or TITLE-ABS-KEY():

• Entering (OA(publisherfullgold) OR OA(publisherhybridgold)) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY(heart) returns documents with Heart that are Gold Open Access only
• Entering TITLE-ABS-KEY(heart) AND NOT OA(ALL) returns documents with Heart that exclude Open Access documents

Why am I seeing more documents per OA filter than the total document results count?

An Open Access document in Scopus can be tagged with more than one OA status as an article can be available in different OA versions (such as Gold and Green). In the OA filter facet, there is a count for Gold and Green for the same document. Note: There is not duplicate counting for publisher-enabled OA documents (Gold, Hybrid-Gold, and Bronze categories).

How often is the Open Access information updated in Scopus?

Scopus receives weekly updates from Unpaywall for the documents indexed in Scopus.

Are the Open Access filters available via the Scopus APIs?

Users can use the same search queries and OA values, as explained on the Advanced Search page, with the Scopus document search and retrieval APIs.

How can I identify which document is an Open Access document in Scopus?

On the Scopus Document details page there is an Open Access label to indicate that a document is OA after the document title.

On the Scopus document search result pages there is an Open Access label below the document title for each separate title if a document is OA.

Can I search for the status of the Creative Commons license of a document in Scopus?

No, Creative Commons (CC) license information is not searchable via Scopus.

Open Access (OA) in Scopus is represented at the journal/source level. Out of the +21,000 active journals indexed in Scopus, approximately 4,065 (and increasing) are registered as OA journals. Open Access refers to journals and articles in which all peer reviewed scholarly articles are online and available without restrictions.

Open Access journals are indicated in orange text as Open Access on any results list where they are available, the Scopus Sources page, or on a Source details page.

How do I find and filter Open Access journals?

• From the Sources page, enter a source title, ISSN, or publisher name using the drop-down list.
• Select  'Find sources' . The Sources list updates to reflect the entered search criteria.
• From the Filter refine list, select 'Display only Open Access journals' .
• Select 'Apply' . The Source listing updates and the Open Access indicator appears next to each Open Access title.

Where are Open Access for journals definitions derived from?

In Scopus, journals are registered as being Open Access only if they are registered as Gold OA or Subsidized OA at one or both of the following:

• Directory of Open Access Journals: https://doaj.org/
• Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources: http://road.issn.org/

What is included?

View of the OA journal types is included in the OA journal list, when registered at the Directory of Open Access Journals, and/or the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources.

These journal types are excluded from the OA journal list:

Scopus updates the OA journal list portion of the Scopus Title list ( http://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content#content-policy-and-selection ) once a year at the end of May, which may lead to minor and temporary discrepancies in the OA journal status.

See All Science Journal Classification Codes (ASJC) to review all ASJC codes used for Scopus sources.

Was this answer helpful?

Thank you for your feedback, it will help us serve you better. If you require assistance, please scroll down and use one of the contact options to get in touch.

Help us to help you:

Thank you for your feedback!

• Why was this answer not helpful?
• It was hard to understand / follow.
• It did not answer my question.
• The solution did not work.
• There was a mistake in the answer.
• Feel free to leave any comments below: Please enter your feedback to submit this form

Related Articles:

• What can I do on a Source details page?
• How do I use the Scopus Sources feature?
• How do I work with document search results?
• How are CiteScore metrics used in Scopus?
• What is Scopus Preview?

For further assistance: