In Scopus you can perform a targeted search with the following operators and wildcards:
| "... ..." | 'loose phrase': words next to each other but not necessarily in that particular order and including singular/plural variations. Please note: in many other search engines "..." means exact phrase! See Combining and breaking off search terms |
| {.. ...} | 'exact phrase': words in that exact order and spelled exactly so |
| AND | both terms must occur |
| OR | at least one of the terms must occur |
| AND NOT | the term must not occur |
| W/n | words must be within an 'n' amount of words from each other |
| * (truncation symbol) |
The * symbol represents 0, 1 or more letters. |
| ? | 'wildcard' for 1 random letter |
If there are too many results to be shown/viewed you can:
Visit for more information the Scopus tutorial about analysing journals.
On the Advanced Search page you can use the 'query builder' to build and perform more systematic and extended searches.
Select the fieldcode you want to use by typing in the first letter (choose your fields from the list in the right hand column). Type your search terms, combined with the correct operators (for example AND, OR, W/x, {...} etc) and click 'Search'.
You can refine your results by using the options offered to you in the left hand column (for example year of publication, language or publication type).
Combined search
You can also type search queries on separate lines and then combine these lines in your search history at the bottom of the page. Click on the Combine query icon: 
(above your search history), check the boxes of the lines you want to combine and choose your operator (AND, OR, AND NOT). Click Show results to perform your search.
TIP! To return from the result page to your Advanced Search query builder, click on the Scopus logo in the left top corner of your screen.
Scopus is working on a new lay out, you can try it yourself. Want to know more? Visit the Scopus Blog, Try the redesigned Scopus Search Results Page!
Sometimes you have an idea of the article you are looking for, but not quite. For instance, someone gave you a tip for an important article on your subject.
Say, you know the subject and a word from the journal title
It is about liquid crystals and it has been published in a journal that includes the word 'polymer' in the title.
The market for multidisciplinary citation databases is dominated by Web of Science and Scopus. Web of Science is older (started in 1961) and has a very solid reputation among scholars. Scopus was the young contender (2004), but is now also very well known worldwide. The databases have become more and more alike, but there are still some important differences.
Scopus
Web of Science
Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search (MAS is shutting down by the end of 2021) are also multidisciplinary scholarly databases with citation information, but support for citation analysis is limited and their data quality control is not as rigid as that of WoS and Scopus. Relatively new is Lens.org, they offer a nice set of analytical graphics.
The order of your search results may be important, because usually you only look at the first ten or twenty hits.
Results are ordered by year of publication as default (Date (newest)).
Use the dropdown menu (at the right side of your screen) to create a new sorting order.
For example you can sort based on relevance, most cited or oldest articles. Or you could order the results alphabetically by first author or source title.
Another used term for sorting by relevance is relevance ranking.
Applied criteria will be:
In addition to all options to limit the number of results, Scopus also contains an extensive analysis function to learn more about your results.
After a search click on 
at the top left of the page.
In a number of diagrams Scopus gives a survey of the composition of the results:
Do you want to know if certain articles will be cited in Scopus?
Click on the article title and choose Set citation alert in the right hand column.
If you get too few results, you can: