How to check Scopus indexed journal: a step by step guide

Scopus is a large database of research abstracts and citations run by Elsevier. Its content policy says it includes titles from more than 7,000 publishers worldwide. When a journal is "Scopus indexed", Scopus has selected it, and the papers it publishes are recorded in the database, where researchers can find them and count their citations.

Scopus indexed journalnoun

A journal that Scopus has accepted after review by its Content Selection and Advisory Board, and whose papers are currently being added to the Scopus database.

A journal cannot simply decide it is in Scopus. The publisher or editor suggests the title, and the independent Content Selection and Advisory Board, the CSAB, evaluates it. Elsevier lists five groups of criteria: journal policy, content, journal standing, publishing regularity and online availability. The Scopus blog adds one line every student should remember: "Scopus does not ask authors to pay in order to be indexed."

Why do Indian universities ask for it? UGC discontinued the CARE list of journals in February 2025, and the suggestive parameters it published in its place count indexing in reputed databases among the signs of a good journal. Each university now sets its own rules, and some, like Rutuja's, name Scopus or Web of Science. Rules differ, so check your own university's ordinance. Our guide to the UGC CARE list explains what changed.

"We do not trust the email," said Dr. Shaikh. "We trust the Scopus record." You do not need a paid subscription for this. Scopus says its title lists are publicly available, and Scopus Preview, its free version, gives anyone access to the Sources page.

1. Find the journal's ISSN.Copy the ISSN, and the E-ISSN if there is one, from the journal's website or the email. Write down the exact title and the publisher's name too.
2. Open the Scopus Sources page.Go to scopus.com/sources. Without an institutional login you see it through Scopus Preview, which is enough to search the list.
3. Search by ISSN, not by title.Choose ISSN in the search box and paste the number. Searching by title also works, but a small difference in spelling can return nothing, and fake journals often copy a real title word for word.
4. Open the journal's source details page.Click the title in the results. This page is the official record of what Scopus covers.
5. Check the coverage years and status.Look for "Scopus coverage years". A range that runs to "Present" means Scopus is still adding the journal's papers. A range that ends in a past year means it has stopped.
6. Match every detail.The title, ISSN, E-ISSN and publisher on the Scopus record should all match the journal you plan to submit to. If one of them differs, stop and find out why.

Rutuja pasted the ISSN from the email. A journal came up, with a respected title in materials science. "So it is real," she said. "The journal is real," said Dr. Shaikh. "We have not yet checked that the email came from it."

The source details page holds more than a yes or a no. Elsevier's support page lists what each part shows; these are the ones to read before you submit.

Scopus is careful to say that coverage years are not a promise. They show which years are in Scopus, not the publisher's full archive, and they do not guarantee that coverage will continue.

The metrics help you choose between genuine journals, but they do not prove that a journal is genuine. Our guide to the impact factor explains how CiteScore and SJR differ from the Journal Impact Factor, and why a "Scopus impact factor" does not exist.

The most common mistake is to stop at "the journal is on Scopus". A journal can have a Scopus record and still not be covered today. According to Elsevier's support page, the label "coverage discontinued in Scopus" can mean one of three things.

• Inactive: Scopus has received no records from the publisher in the last three years.
• Discontinued: the journal no longer meets Scopus standards. It was flagged and re-evaluated by the CSAB, which decided to end coverage.
• Stopped: the journal changed its name and ISSN. Scopus links the old title to the new one, so check the new title's record.

Scopus also keeps a separate Discontinued Sources List, an Excel file linked from Elsevier's content policy page and updated every month. The Scopus blog says it shows the volume and issue where indexing stopped. A journal can show as discontinued on the Scopus website without appearing in that file, for example when it is inactive, so treat the source details page as the first check and the list as the second.

What happens to papers already in Scopus? Elsevier's policy says the content already indexed "remains as a matter of scientific record", except in rare cases of proven, severe unethical publishing. Papers published after coverage stops are not added. So a paper sent today to a discontinued journal will not appear in Scopus, however good the journal's old record looks.

A hijacked journal is a fake website that copies the name, ISSN and look of a real journal. Fraudsters often target journals indexed in Scopus or Web of Science, sometimes by registering a real journal's expired web address. When you search the ISSN on Scopus, you find the real journal's record, and the fake site borrows its good name.

The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, maintained by Anna Abalkina with Retraction Watch, lists these websites. It started in May 2022 with a little over 100 entries, and by December 2025 it had passed 400. The same report mentions a study that found 67 hijacked journals had compromised the data of genuine journals in Scopus, so papers from fake sites have sometimes slipped into real records.

A 2025 guest post on Retraction Watch described one such site: a polished website, a real Scopus listing, an ISSN that belonged to a different title, and editors who could not be verified.

Dr. Shaikh opened the publisher's own website and followed its link to the journal. The address was different from the one in Rutuja's email. The email's site was in the Hijacked Journal Checker. "The journal is in Scopus," she said. "This website is not the journal."

The Scopus Sources page is the official answer. A few free tools help you confirm what you find there.

Quartiles are where "Q1" claims come from. Q1 means the top quarter of a subject category by SJR, so an email that says "Q1 journal" without naming the category tells you very little. Check it yourself on SCImago.

Whether a genuine journal suits your paper is a separate question. Our guide on how to choose the right journal covers it.

Engineering and computer science students often publish in conferences, and conference posters often carry the Scopus logo. Scopus covers serial publications with an ISSN, such as journals, book series and conference series, and one-off publications with an ISBN, such as single volumes of proceedings. It does not index a conference's website.

1. Find out who publishes the proceedings.Ask the organisers for the publisher and the name of the proceedings series. A vague "will be submitted to Scopus" is not an answer.
2. Search the series on the Scopus Sources page.Check its coverage years and status, exactly as you would for a journal.
3. Look at the last edition.Ask for the ISBN of the proceedings, or a link to the previous year's volume in Scopus. If last year's papers are not in Scopus, take that as a warning.

Rutuja deleted the email. With Dr. Shaikh she drew up a short list of three textile and dye chemistry journals, checked each one's Scopus record and website, and reached the first through its publisher's own submission page. Then she started on the formatting. Our guide on how to publish a research paper covers what came next.