A journal that is “delisted” or “discontinued” from Scopus has had its ongoing coverage in Elsevier’s Scopus database stopped after review by the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) — the same body that approves journals for indexing in the first place. Discontinuation is not a rare, one-off event: it is a standing part of how Scopus maintains its database, running alongside new-title acceptance on a continuous basis. This guide explains why Elsevier removes journals from Scopus, how the re-evaluation process works, what happens to a journal’s already-indexed articles, and how to check a title’s current status — distinct from the parallel, but separately run, delisting process at Web of Science.
What “Scopus delisting” actually means
Scopus indexing is not permanent by default. A journal accepted by CSAB is indexed on an ongoing, issue-by-issue basis for as long as it continues to meet Scopus’s content-selection criteria. If Elsevier determines a title no longer meets those criteria, or the journal itself ceases publishing, the title’s status changes to “discontinued”: no further articles are added to Scopus going forward. This is distinct from a journal never having been accepted in the first place — see CASRAI’s companion guide, Getting a Journal Indexed in Scopus: The CSAB Process, for how initial acceptance works.
Elsevier’s own Scopus content policy and selection documentation describes discontinuation as the outcome of a formal re-evaluation, not an automatic or purely administrative action.
What triggers a re-evaluation
Per Elsevier’s published content policy, a journal already indexed in Scopus can be flagged for re-evaluation through two routes:
- Concerns raised by the research community. Editors, authors, readers, or institutions can report concerns about a journal’s publication standards — commonly around research integrity and publication ethics (for example, editorial practices, peer-review breakdowns, or patterns consistent with paper mills).
- Elsevier’s own outlier-detection models. Elsevier applies data models to Scopus content to flag “unexpected patterns” in a journal’s publication activity, citation graphs, author collaboration networks, or content itself — for example, unusual spikes in output volume, atypical self-citation or citation-stacking patterns, or clusters of author collaborations that don’t match normal disciplinary behavior.
Separately from misconduct-related re-evaluation, a title is also discontinued simply because it has stopped publishing — a journal that ceases operations no longer generates new content for Scopus to index, and its status changes to discontinued for that reason alone, with no ethics finding involved.
The re-evaluation and CSAB decision process
Once a title is flagged, Elsevier states that “the content flow for these titles will be suspended until the re-evaluation is complete” — meaning new articles stop being added to Scopus while CSAB reviews the title, before any final decision is made. CSAB then decides either to continue coverage (the journal remains indexed, content flow resumes) or to discontinue it. This mirrors the same CSAB structure used for new-journal acceptance decisions, applied in reverse to an already-indexed title.
What happens to a journal’s already-indexed articles
Discontinuation is forward-looking by default. Elsevier’s stated policy is that “the content already indexed in Scopus remains as a matter of scientific record” once a title is discontinued — articles published and indexed before the discontinuation date stay searchable in Scopus, retain their existing citation counts, and are not retroactively removed. The one stated exception is severe: Elsevier’s policy allows for already-indexed content to be removed “in exceptional cases of proven and severe unethical publication practice” — a materially higher bar than the standard that triggers discontinuation itself. In practice, this means most discontinuations leave the historical record intact and simply stop future indexing; full retroactive content removal is reserved for confirmed serious misconduct findings, not routine re-evaluation outcomes.
How to check whether a journal is currently indexed or has been discontinued
Elsevier publishes the authoritative record directly: the Scopus Source Title List — a downloadable spreadsheet available from Scopus’s public source-information pages — is updated monthly and includes a list of discontinued sources alongside currently active ones. A journal’s individual Scopus Source Title page (accessible without a subscription via Scopus’s freely browsable source-information tool) also reflects current coverage status. Because the list is refreshed monthly, a title’s status can be confirmed directly rather than relying on secondary reporting, which is worth doing before citing any specific count or list of recently affected titles — third-party blogs and “journal tracker” sites have increasingly taken to summarizing each month’s changes to the Source Title List, but Elsevier’s own list is the primary record and the one worth checking directly for a specific title.
Scopus discontinuation vs. Web of Science delisting
Scopus and Clarivate’s Web of Science run separate indexing operations with separate selection boards, separate criteria, and separate discontinuation decisions — a journal can be discontinued from one while remaining indexed in the other, or vice versa. CASRAI covers several real, documented cases of this on individual journal pages, including Is Cureus Peer Reviewed? (Web of Science delisting) and Hindawi Journal Impact Factor: What Happened to Hindawi and Is MDPI Peer Reviewed? (both touching Clarivate’s 2023 “Content Relevance” review, which affected journals from multiple publishers). For understanding how the two databases’ coverage, criteria, and metrics differ more generally, see the comparison Scopus vs Web of Science vs OpenAlex and the guide to the Web of Science Master Journal List. Do not assume a journal’s Scopus status tells you anything about its Web of Science status, or the reverse — check each database directly.
What this means for authors and research administrators
Discontinuation has practical, downstream consequences worth planning for:
- Articles already published before the discontinuation date keep their Scopus record under the normal policy, so past output generally remains countable in Scopus-based bibliometrics such as CiteScore for that historical period.
- New articles published in the journal after discontinuation will not be Scopus-indexed, which affects any evaluation, funding, or promotion criteria that specifically requires Scopus (or Scopus-derived) indexing going forward.
- A manuscript under review or in production at a journal is not automatically at risk — discontinuation is a database-coverage decision about the journal, not a retraction of any specific article — but it is worth checking a target journal’s current status before submitting, particularly for a title that has drawn public scrutiny.
- Research offices and library teams supporting researchers on where to submit should treat a recent discontinuation as a signal worth investigating rather than a reason to categorically avoid the venue — discontinuation for “ceased publishing” carries very different implications than discontinuation following an ethics-related re-evaluation, and the Source Title List does not always make the underlying reason obvious without further checking.
Frequently asked questions
Is Scopus delisting the same as retraction?
No. Delisting (discontinuation) is a database-coverage decision Elsevier makes about a journal as a whole, going forward. Retraction is a decision an individual journal or publisher makes about a specific article, for that article’s own reasons (data errors, misconduct findings, plagiarism, and similar). A journal can be discontinued from Scopus with no articles retracted, and a fully Scopus-indexed journal can retract individual articles without any change to its indexing status.
Can a discontinued journal be re-added to Scopus later?
Elsevier’s published process describes re-evaluation as a route back to continued coverage if CSAB decides the title still meets its criteria, but does not describe a general path for a journal already discontinued to be reinstated after the fact without a fresh evaluation. A publisher would need to demonstrate the underlying concern has been resolved and go through Elsevier’s standard review channel again.
Does a Scopus discontinuation automatically mean the journal is predatory?
No. Discontinuation covers a range of reasons, from a journal simply ceasing publication to editorial-policy changes Scopus can no longer confirm meet its standards to confirmed integrity concerns. See CASRAI’s guide to identifying predatory journals and publishers for the separate, more specific criteria used to assess predatory practice directly, rather than inferring it from indexing status alone.
Where can I see the full current list of discontinued Scopus titles?
Elsevier’s monthly-updated Scopus Source Title List, downloadable from Scopus’s public source-information pages, is the primary record and includes discontinued sources. Check a specific title there, or on its individual Scopus Source Title page, rather than relying solely on third-party summaries.
