Designing precise queries across disciplines

In scopusflow: A Reproducible Workflow Layer for 'Scopus' Bibliographic Searches

knitr::opts_chunk$set(collapse = TRUE, comment = "#>")

library(scopusflow)

A retrieval is only as good as its query. This article shows how to compose correct, field-tagged 'Scopus' queries with scopus_query() rather than pasting fragments by hand, where a missing bracket or a mistyped tag quietly returns the wrong records. Everything here is string construction, so it all runs offline; each query is shown as the literal string it produces.

Field tags decide where to look

A field tag restricts a query to part of a record. scopus_field_tags() lists the common ones.

scopus_field_tags()

The most generally useful tag is TITLE-ABS-KEY, which searches the title, abstract and keywords together, broad enough to catch a topic without the noise of a full-text match.

One term, many disciplines

The same builder serves any field. Each call below returns the exact query string that would be sent to 'Scopus'.

scopus_query("CRISPR", .field = "TITLE-ABS-KEY")              # molecular biology
scopus_query("gravitational waves", .field = "TITLE-ABS-KEY") # physics
scopus_query("microplastics", .field = "TITLE-ABS-KEY")       # environmental science
scopus_query("blockchain", .field = "TITLE-ABS-KEY")          # computer science
scopus_query("digital humanities", .field = "AUTHKEY")        # humanities

The last example uses AUTHKEY, the author-supplied keywords, which isolates work that self-identifies with a field and so cuts incidental mentions.

Combining terms with boolean operators

Passing several terms joins them. The default operator is AND, and OR or AND NOT are available through .op.

# Two concepts that must co-occur (materials science).
scopus_query("perovskite", "solar cell", .field = "TITLE-ABS-KEY")

# Spelling variants, either of which will do (economics).
scopus_query("behavioral economics", "behavioural economics", .op = "OR")

# A family of related tools (molecular biology).
scopus_query("CRISPR", "Cas9", "Cas12", .op = "OR")

From a query to a plan

A composed query drops straight into the rest of the workflow. Here it anchors a year-partitioned plan, which keeps each cell under the API's 5000-record ceiling.

q <- scopus_query("gut microbiome", "immunology", .field = "TITLE-ABS-KEY")
q
plan <- scopus_plan(q, years = 2015:2022, partition = "year")
plan

The plan is ready to size and run, which contacts the API.

scopus_count(q, years = 2015:2022)
records <- scopus_fetch_plan(plan)

Searching by affiliation

Field tags reach beyond topics. AFFILORG searches the affiliation, which turns a query into an institution-level view of output.

scopus_query("Max Planck", .field = "AFFILORG")

When a term is empty

The builder validates its input, so a stray empty term is caught early rather than producing a malformed query.

tryCatch(
  scopus_query("graphene", ""),
  scopus_error_bad_input = function(e) conditionMessage(e)
)

scopusflow documentation built on June 20, 2026, 5:06 p.m.