Using Advanced Search
On the Advanced search form, you can create a search using field codes, proximity operators, or boolean operators to narrow the scope of the search.
To create an advanced search, Click "Advanced Search" from the main search page
To search for keywords in an article's title or abstract, type in TITLE-ABS before your search terms. Be sure to use parentheses! For example, this is correct: (TITLE-ABS( children OR pediatrics)) but this is not correct: TITLE-ABS children OR pediatrics
When doing a Boolean search, Scopus insists that parentheses be used correctly. If you get a message about a Syntax Error, check your (( )).
Scopus needs Boolean operators (AND, OR) to be capitalized. To exclude in Scopus, you must use AND NOT (not just 'NOT').
Combining Searches
If you want to search on individual topics and then combine searches (i.e. you are using a PICO format), here are the steps to combine your various searches. One important thing to remember: Scopus only saves your searches until you log out, so you'll want to get this done in one sitting.
1) run your various searches. It's ok to do several tries on a search.
2) when you're ready to combine them, click on Search again.
3) the next screen brings up your searches. Click on the ones you want to combine. Scopus will combine them in the order given. This only matters if you need the final search string to be in a certain order.
4) once you've got the boxes checked off, click "Combine Queries.'
5) A box will appear above. Here you can choose whether to combine using AND (most common) or OR, or AND NOT. When you've chosen that, hit Enter or Show Results.
The next screen will have your search results.
