What Scopus Technology (US) does

Scopus is Elsevier's flagship abstract and citation database for peer-reviewed scientific literature, offering a unified research intelligence platform used by universities, medical schools, government research organizations, and publishers. The platform aggregates more than 100 million research records across 28,000+ journals from 7,000+ publishers, supported by 20 million+ author profiles and 90,000+ organization profiles. Core technical components include proprietary author and organization disambiguation algorithms, citation analytics, and journal impact metrics (CiteScore, SJR, SNIP), with AI-powered research discovery and synthesis capabilities branded as Scopus AI. CiteScore methodology is administered by an independent Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB), which provides third-party legitimacy to the journal impact metric.

The business model is anchored in institutional subscriptions sold through Elsevier's global corporate sales force, with quote-based, annual pricing that varies by institution size, user count, and access tier. Secondary revenue comes from API access through the Elsevier Developer Portal. End-user access is primarily IP-authenticated through subscribing institutions, with limited individual or self-service channels. Primary customer segments are research universities and academic institutions (vertically primary) and healthcare and medical institutions (vertically primary), with government research organizations and publishers as secondary segments. Marketing is conducted via content channels including the Scopus Blog, academic conferences, webinars, and tutorials.

Scopus is owned and operated by Elsevier B.V., itself a subsidiary of RELX Group (LSE: REL), and is not a separately reported business segment. Scopus is actively operating as a product, with no separate funding rounds, management team disclosures, or standalone financials available in the source data.

Name

Scopus Technology (US)

Legal name

Elsevier B.V.

Website

https://scopus.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1991

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database platform serving research universities, medical libraries, government research organizations, and publishers globally through institutional subscriptions and AI-powered research tools.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Academic Research Database

NAICS

Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192)

SIC

Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721)

akta.pro primary industry

Academic & Scholarly Journals Publishing (Peer-Reviewed) (MPAJABAC)

akta.pro secondary industry

Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAI)

Keywords

• Academic research database
• Citation analytics
• Bibliometric analysis
• Scholarly literature search
• Research intelligence platform

Headquarters

HQ city

Emeryville

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Supply Chain

Revenue model

1. Institutional Subscriptions: Scopus generates revenue through institutional subscriptions sold to universities, research libraries, healthcare institutions, and government organizations. Subscriptions provide access to the full database with tiered pricing based on institution size and user count.
2. API Access: Programmatic API access for developers and integrators, enabling data mining and integration with research systems

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Scopus provides a comprehensive abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed scholarly literature, indexing 100 million+ research records from 28,000+ journals across 7,000+ publishers. The platform delivers author and organization profiles, citation analytics, journal impact metrics (CiteScore, SJR, SNIP), and Scopus AI-powered research discovery, primarily through institutional subscriptions sold to universities, research libraries, healthcare institutions, and government organizations.

Product overview

Scopus is a single unified research intelligence platform provided by Elsevier. It offers comprehensive abstract and citation database coverage with tools for literature discovery, author profiling, journal evaluation, and research analytics. Key components include: an extensive database of 100M+ research documents across 28,000+ journals from 7,000+ publishers; author profiles featuring publications, h-index, and citation metrics for 20M+ authors; organization profiles covering 90,000+ organizations; and journal impact metrics including CiteScore, SJR, and SNIP indicators. The platform also incorporates AI-powered research features for knowledge retrieval and synthesis.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Scopus Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed scientific literature covering 100 million+ research records from 28,000+ journals, providing search, author profiles, organization profiles, and journal impact metrics for institutional subscribers including universities, research libraries, healthcare institutions, and government research organizations.
• Scopus AI Generative AI-powered research discovery and analysis capability that enables users to discover and synthesize information from the Scopus corpus of 100 million+ research records, retrieve relevant literature, track citation patterns, identify keyword trends, and generate insights from academic content.
• CiteScore Metrics Journal impact metric providing comprehensive and transparent citation-based measurement covering 49,599 sources, with methodology governed by the independent Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB). Available alongside SJR and SNIP indicators for journal evaluation.
• Scopus API Programmatic API access allowing developers and integrators to access Scopus content and data for data mining and integration with research systems. API documentation is available through the Elsevier Developer Portal.

Quantifiable outcome

• 100 million+ research records supported
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability7 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• ElseviercoreOEM/ Whitelabel/ Licensing PartnerScopus is an Elsevier product, operated and distributed by Elsevier's academic publishing infrastructure. Elsevier provides the operational and distribution backbone for Scopus services.
• Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerIndependent advisory board responsible for ensuring Scopus content selection meets rigorous quality standards. The CSAB provides governance over content quality and coverage decisions.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Web of Science (Clarivate): Web of Science is the closest direct competitor to Scopus — both are subscription-based multidisciplinary abstract and citation databases of peer-reviewed literature serving universities, research institutions, and corporations. They compete head-to-head for institutional library budgets, journal impact metrics, and author/institution analytics.
• Google Scholar: Google Scholar is the most widely used free alternative for literature search and citation tracking, serving the same core researcher workflow (discovery, citation export, profile pages) as Scopus. While less curated and not institutionally licensed, it directly competes for researcher mindshare and is a primary reason libraries must justify Scopus' cost.
• Dimensions (Digital Science): Dimensions is a competing research intelligence platform that links publications, grants, patents, and clinical trials into a single database. It targets the same institutional buyers and research analytics use cases as Scopus, with a particular strength in funding and policy research workflows.
• PubMed / PubMed Central (NLM): PubMed is the dominant free biomedical literature database, indexing MEDLINE and life sciences journals with extensive coverage in medicine and biology. It is the primary reference database in Scopus' largest single vertical (healthcare/medical research) and a direct alternative for biomedical literature discovery.

Emerging players

• OpenAlex: OpenAlex is an open, free catalog of the world's scholarly outputs that has rapidly gained adoption as a community-driven alternative to Scopus and Web of Science. It indexes a comparable set of publications and citations, and is increasingly used by libraries and AI developers seeking an open alternative to commercial citation databases.
• Semantic Scholar (Allen Institute for AI): Semantic Scholar is an AI-powered academic search engine covering 200M+ papers with semantic search, citation context, and AI-generated summaries. It overlaps with Scopus on literature discovery and is increasingly used as a free, AI-native alternative for researchers, particularly for early-stage literature review.
• The Lens: The Lens is an open scholarly and patent database offering citation, bibliographic, and patent analytics with a free public interface and institutional offerings. It overlaps with Scopus on citation analysis and scholarly metadata, and serves similar use cases in research assessment and bibliometrics.
• Elicit: Elicit is an AI research assistant that uses LLMs to find, summarize, and extract data from academic papers, directly competing with Scopus AI for literature review workflows. It represents the emerging AI-native threat to traditional citation databases, particularly for individual researchers and smaller research teams.

Others

• Crossref: Crossref is the official DOI registration agency for scholarly publications, providing the underlying metadata and citation links that power Scopus, OpenAlex, and most other citation databases. It is an enabling infrastructure provider rather than a direct competitor, but a critical upstream dependency for the entire ecosystem.
• ORCID: ORCID is the leading persistent digital identifier for researchers, used by publishers, funders, and institutions to disambiguate authorship. It is an enabler and partial alternative to Scopus' proprietary author disambiguation, and increasingly integrated into scholarly infrastructure as an open standard.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/hebei-general-hospital

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Scopus Technology (US)