Library Skills
Cited Reference searching
Cited Reference searching can be a useful strategy for students and researchers wanting to identify the potential impact a publication has had in a discipline by determining the number of citations a paper receives.
If you have found a useful paper on your topic, a search or analysis of the citing references of this paper can be a useful gauge to determine:
- more recent papers on the same or similar topic
- how knowledge in your discipline has developed over time by placing work in chronological context
- how knowledge has been applied, improved, extended, or corrected.
Web of Science and Scopus are the major resources for citation searching:
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window Major research database of the worlds top Science & Technology journals and conference proceedings with some additional Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities coverage. Includes research tools e.g. citation reports and cited reference searching.
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What is a cited reference search in Web of Science?
How to do a cited reference search in Web of Science:
See also the Library's video and help guidance for Web of Science:
- Scopus This link opens in a new window Scopus is a journal indexing and abstracting database with citation metrics from Elsevier. It covers international research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities (with a growing coverage of book chapters).
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How to search the cited literature in Scopus:
See also the Library's video and help guidance for advanced features of Scopus:
