Skip to Main Content
Library Guides

Library Skills

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:

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:

Web of Science Basic

Web of Science Advanced

How to search the cited literature in Scopus:

 

See also the Library's video and help guidance for advanced features of Scopus:

Scopus Basics

Scopus Advanced