Tracing Cited References
Researchers can often find useful scholarship by identifying one particularly relevant book or article and seeing which sources that text cites. With print texts, this process might involve checking the bibliography. In some databases, you can also trace citations forward in time and find subsequent material that cites a particularly useful resource. Use the following databases to find a relevant resource and then see which later texts cite the one with which you start. Keep in mind, however, that the citations will no be comprehensive—i.e., the citations will often be limited by the scope of the database in which you're working.
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Google ScholarGoogle Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web--About Google scholar.
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Web of ScienceFollow these instructions to conduct cited reference searches in Web of Science:
- Choose the "Cited Reference Search tab" to begin.
- Then enter the author's name (last name, then first initial only with asterisk: e.g., smith, b*).
- Insert the publication year in the "Cited Year" box.
- Under "Current Limits," open Citation Databases and uncheck any collections that you want to exclude from your search. (You will most likely want only the Arts & Humanities Citation Index.)
- On the next screen, choose the relevant results based on the "Cited Work" titles. The results screen shows the newest articles first. Check the article summary (if included) to determine the relevance of each resource.
