Cameron Ross at Elsevier points me to a method of checking the number of records in Scopus and the number of abstracts. By using quotation marks as for proximity search ” “ and default fields article title, abstracts, keywords you get the total number of records in Scopus. This screenshot returns 27,490,216 hits:
When checking the number of abstracts you write this “a” OR “e” OR “i” OR “o” OR “u” and limit to abstract field. This screenshot returns 16,485,320 hits:
One Entry to Research 
March 8, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Click here to see a brandnew review article about SCOPUS!
http://digicmb.blogspot.com/2006/03/review-of-scopus-database.html
regards,
Guus van den Brekel
April 5, 2006 at 4:26 am
Cameron’s trick doesn’t work any more (since the last update that is). However a search for TITLE-ABS-KEY(“a” OR “e” OR “o” OR “u” OR “the” OR “an”) delivers you 23.344.534 results which is a fair estimate of the total contents.
One interesting aspect is that the search ALL(” “) doesn’t give you any scopus results, but 216.215.987 Scirus results which is less than you find in Scirus itself.
April 5, 2006 at 6:40 am
Yes, we discovered that change at the swedish workshop 31 mars. I will check it up again when I return to this project in June.