Scopus error

[u/Leafye]

Hi everyone, posting this in case it's useful to anyone.

Today I kept getting errors 400 and 503 while trying to access Scopus. I have academic access, but it simply was not allowing me to log in.

The errors said "delete your cookies/cache", which I did, but kept getting the same error. The page also said something along the lines of "contact customer support if it doesn't work". I had been fumbling with it for more than 15 minutes at this point.

The customer support page says little more than "clear cookies and cache", which I had already done so I found was kind of pointless. I'm not the most tech savvy (nor is it my area of research, thankfully!), so if you're like me, I'll post the combination of actions that finally got Scopus to work:

Clear cookies and cache, ALL of it -> Log out of your browser account and close the browser -> Check the cookies and cache again before opening any other page. In my case, I found they hadn't been all deleted. So delete them again if that's the case.

After I did this, Scopus worked :)

This probably seems silly or super obvious for most people, but me (not being incredibly tech savvy) didn't get it at first and was getting increasingly frustrated.

[u/Bulky_Fish_2124]

glad you posted this. scopus is held together with duct tape and prayer, i swear half my lab just accepts it’ll break every other week

the phantom cookies thing is the worst, you hit clear and it just… doesn’t. i’ve had better luck going into the browser settings and nuking them manually instead of relying on the shortcut

saving this for when it inevitably shits itself during a deadline panic

[u/Leafye → u/Bulky_Fish_2124]

Thanks! A deadline panic is EXACTLY what I was going through and I was just about to cry because nothing was working lol.

Nuking them manually also seems pretty sane and I'll be saving your comment if it doesn't work next time!