Proximity searching is a technique for searching a keyword within a certain number of words from another keyword. Searching in this manner can help to limit the total number of results you receive while delivering a more focused list of results relevant to your topic in a database. Finding keywords within close proximity to one another is a simple and useful way to employ some advanced searching techniques into your research workflow. Try proximity searching from the main search box on the library website (Summon) using this example: “radiotherapy carcinoma” ~3.

The ~3 tells Summon to find the words radiotherapy and carcinoma within 3 words from one another. The double quotes surrounding both words are necessary so Summon knows which keywords to search on. For questions about proximity searching in Summon (or other databases), please ask us!

Did you know that when you use the main search box on the Library website you are using the Summon search and discovery tool? Summon can be thought of as a comprehensive, very large web-scale database and source of literature. Instead of having a niche focus like PubMed for biomedical information, Embase for pharmaceutical/drug information, PsycINFO for behavioral sciences, CINAHL for nursing and allied health literature, or AMED for complementary and alternative medicine information, Summon indexes sources from all of these resources and beyond – capturing not only what’s in the MSK Library collection, but searches can also be expanded to include results that exist outside of MSK. Follow these steps to run a basic search and view the difference between MSK-subscribed content vs. going beyond MSK’s collection.

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Using Scopus to analyze an overview of a set of citations is useful for viewing the citation trend for a set of documents, finding all publications citing a specific document (or set of documents), and discovering the overall impact of publications in a research area of interest. These 5 easy steps will help you to create a citation overview in just minutes:

1. After running a Scopus search narrow down your results the best you can, ideally to less than 2,000 records.
2. Select what you want included in your analysis. You can choose to include specific documents, or include all results from a given page (‘Select page‘) or  the entire results list (‘Select all‘). Once you’ve made your selections, click the ‘View Citation Overview’ link.
3. The Citation Overview tool will display the citation information for each document you selected from your results list. Citations from the current year, along with the 4 preceding years, are automatically included in the table. If desired, you can adjust which years to display.
4. You can also further modify the table by choosing whether to exclude self-citations or citations from books, in addition to specifying how you want documents sorted.
5. Now you can begin studying the information and continue manipulating the chart to help pinpoint key research you want to investigate further, or use the information to identify trends in a particular research area.

Ask us if you would like further assistance with analyzing citation trends in your area of interest or research focus. You can also watch the pre-recorded webcast from Elsevier on using Scopus’ analysis tools (33 minutes).