SciVal is a Research Intelligence Solution which allows users to view and analyse the publication and citation data within the Scopus database. Scopus citation and publication data underpins the QS and THE World Rankings. You can use SciVal to:
Durham University is a signatory of DORA (San Francisco Declaration On Research Assessment) and has a Responsible Metrics Statement and Policy, which states that the University:
"recognises that improperly used metrics can reinforce existing biases that impinge on the University’s mission to enhance diversity and equality amongst its academic staff, and it is important that they are used with due awareness of their limitations"
SciVal provides a tool to view and analyse publication and citation data for individual articles and authors. It is essential that all users of SciVal use the data and tools it provides appropriately and in line with University policy.
Please see our Responsible Metrics and Overview of Research indicator guides for more information:
The following professional support departments provide assistance on use of SciVal and Scopus for publication and citation data:
You may also find the guides below of use:
The first time you use SciVal you will have to register a username and password, unless you have already registered a personal account with other Elsevier services (like Scopus or Science Direct, or as editor or peer reviewer for an Elsevier journal). When registering use your Durham University email address as the username, and create a unique password using a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers or special characters.
From the SciVal homepage, click on the link marked Check access if you have not used SciVal before. This will all;ow you to check your institutional remote access for Durham University.
If you have problems accessing SciVal from off campus, please try the options below:
The preferred option is to request your Elsevier user account is set-up for remote access to SciVal. To do this, please contact the SciVal Support Centre directly to request this is enabled.
Please note that this can take 24-48 hours to be implemented
You can access SciVal off-campus via the VPN (registration for access to the VPN available to all staff and research postgraduates).
When accessing off-campus for the first time, you will not be able to register for a new SciVal account. Please access SciVal via this off-campus link to register a SciVal account.
Please be aware that some functionality (such as sharing of entities created within SciVal) may not be available if accessing via VPN or EZProxy.
The University has been provided with a small number of tokens which can be used to allow remote access in urgent cases. If this is required, please contact scival.support@durham.ac.uk. Please note however that this email is not monitored 24 hours a day, and you are strongly recommended to use the other options available in most cases.
SciVal uses publication and citation data from the Scopus database. SciVal is used by universities, recruitment agencies, funders and other research organisations as part of research assessment, recruitment and management processes.
It is important that authors to ensure the data held in the Scopus database and linked to their automatically generated author profile is accurate and up to date. Please see the video below for an overview of how you can claim your author profile, keep up to date with new publications and ensure the accuracy of the data it contains.
Durham Staff and Students have access to all four SciVal modules (Overview, Benchmarking, Collaboration, Trends), and the reporting tool which allows you to create, export and share custom reports.
The Overview module provides a high-level overview of the research performance of an institution, country, research group or individual author, with a range of predefined metrics over a set of pre-defined and limited time periods (e.g. the most recent 7 years).
The Benchmarking module allows you to compare 1 or more research entities (institutions, custom research groups, authors etc.), over an extended time period (back to 1996) and using any metrics available within the SciVal service.
The Collaboration module allows institutions and authors to identify existing and potential collaborations (based on co-authorship or publication strengths).
