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Search Skills

Citation Searching

You can use a technique called citation searching to find more useful resources using a relevant journal article.  
This effective search technique helps you to:

  • identify how a source fits into the broader academic conversation
  • find other relevant studies and perspectives
  • find foundational/influential research in the field
  • map the development of ideas and discover a range of viewpoints

There are two ways to citation search: 

  1. Look backwards: Check the bibliography of the article for any sources they’ve referenced that are relevant to you. This is a useful way to discover key texts and foundational works related to your research topic. 

  1. Look forwards: Generate a list of works which have cited this article since it was published. You can do this in library search and other research databases, or from the article’s landing page, to discover other potentially relevant articles which were published more recently.  

Could also put in a note about that not all citations will be from the same subject area, which might be good to find novel perspectives or may not be relevant. Also think about where the citation is in the text e.g., introduction/Literature review (foundational/background/influential), Methods (builds on or uses method), Results (comparison), Discussion (builds on, confirms, challenges findings) 

Citation searching in library search: 

  • Look for the red ‘Citing this’ and ‘Sources cited in this’ buttons. These appear in the right corner of a result, and in a ‘Citations’ section after you click to view a result:

 

  • Use the ‘cited in this’ button to see the article’s bibliography. 

  • Use the ‘citing this’ button to view articles which have cited this one: 

  • These buttons may not appear for some journal articles. This means the article either hasn’t been cited yet or library search hasn’t been able to find any citations.  

  • Please be aware that library search won’t necessarily find all citations. It’s important to check other indexes like Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar to compile a complete list of citations. 

  • These other research databases or the journal article’s landing page will list citations library search has missed.  

Citation searching from the journal article’s landing page: 

  • All article’s landing pages will look different but look for a ‘citations’ button or a ‘cited by’ sidebar.   

  • Citation searching from the article’s landing page will usually give a fuller list of works citing the article.  

  • There is often a link to view the citations in another database, like Web of Science. This is useful for articles with lots of citations as it allows you to filter and search within the list.