1. Build your search to avoid "noise".

SciVerse Scopus is :

• over 19,500 magazine titles, 5,000 international publishers ;

• more than 1,800 open access titles, a figure set to rise as Elsevier launches a wide range of open access journals;

• 325 book collections ;

• nearly 5 million conference proceedings;

• nearly 25 million patents from all over the world (Japan, Great Britain, United States, etc.);

• millions of web pages from the Scirus search engine (Elsevier);

• anteriority dating back to 1996 and, in some cases, as far back as the early 19th century.