A Brief Technical History of SCOPUS and SCOPUS AI
A Brief Technical History of SCOPUS and SCOPUS AI
SCOPUS is a complex digital information system and reference database which collates and processes data on academic institutions, authors and researchers, and publications, including peer-reviewed journals, textbooks, conference proceedings, preprints and patents on a global basis.
The outputs of a range of analyses of this data include bibliometric measurements of the performance of these many elements, and intelligence which informs institutions, corporations and governments on investments and their outputs. Through these functions and the huge investments in resources which have made the system possible, SCOPUS exercises a major influence over global behaviours across the global academic ecosystem, and its owners, Elsevier BV of the Netherlands, seek to do so in a responsible manner.
SCOPUS has been in continuous evolution since it was first conceived in the early 2000s. I have sought to capture many facets of the system in a series of essays from my privileged insights as the Subject Chair for Medicine on the SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board since 2009, for my own education and for the public record.
In this essay, I have sought to capture and to present a brief technical history of the system between ~2000 and the end of 2025, and in particular to address the early evolution of advanced digital analytics tools, including SCOPUS AI and SCOPUS Insight Graphs.
I hope that this document will have future value to developers and users of the system who wish to understand its origins.
SCOPUS, Content Selection Advisory Board, Bibliometrics: Artificial Intelligence;, Knowledge Graphs, Insight Graphs, Graph Database Technology, Large Language Models, Neo4j;, SCOPUS AI
University of Southampton
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
19 December 2025
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
Rew, David
(2025)
A Brief Technical History of SCOPUS and SCOPUS AI
(Essays on the Adjudication of Quality in the Global Academic Literature: SCOPUS and the work of the Content Selection Advisory Board, 2010-2025)
University of Southampton
42pp.
Record type:
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Abstract
SCOPUS is a complex digital information system and reference database which collates and processes data on academic institutions, authors and researchers, and publications, including peer-reviewed journals, textbooks, conference proceedings, preprints and patents on a global basis.
The outputs of a range of analyses of this data include bibliometric measurements of the performance of these many elements, and intelligence which informs institutions, corporations and governments on investments and their outputs. Through these functions and the huge investments in resources which have made the system possible, SCOPUS exercises a major influence over global behaviours across the global academic ecosystem, and its owners, Elsevier BV of the Netherlands, seek to do so in a responsible manner.
SCOPUS has been in continuous evolution since it was first conceived in the early 2000s. I have sought to capture many facets of the system in a series of essays from my privileged insights as the Subject Chair for Medicine on the SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board since 2009, for my own education and for the public record.
In this essay, I have sought to capture and to present a brief technical history of the system between ~2000 and the end of 2025, and in particular to address the early evolution of advanced digital analytics tools, including SCOPUS AI and SCOPUS Insight Graphs.
I hope that this document will have future value to developers and users of the system who wish to understand its origins.
Text
David Rew a Brief Technical History of SCOPUS and SCOPUS AI 19.12.2025
- Author's Original
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Published date: 19 December 2025
Additional Information:
David Rew, MA MB MChir (Cambridge) FRCS (London)
Honorary Consultant Surgeon to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, UK
And to the Clinical Informatics Research Unit.
Former Editor in Chief of the EJSO, The European Journal of Surgical Oncology, 2003-2009
Subject Chair for Medicine to the SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board, Elsevier BV,
The Netherlands, 2009 to the Present
Keywords:
SCOPUS, Content Selection Advisory Board, Bibliometrics: Artificial Intelligence;, Knowledge Graphs, Insight Graphs, Graph Database Technology, Large Language Models, Neo4j;, SCOPUS AI
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 508082
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/508082
PURE UUID: e788763a-6ee0-4a79-840a-0a2173cc77f2
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Date deposited: 13 Jan 2026 17:32
Last modified: 14 Jan 2026 02:57
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