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How to search us­ing ref­er­ences

Use ref­er­ences as the start­ing point for your search. It is a bril­liant tech­nique that helps you find texts on sim­il­ar top­ics without hav­ing to come up with keywords. It is a great way to dis­cov­er rel­ev­ant lit­er­at­ure.

Us­ing cita­tions and ref­er­ences for search­ing

Searching by references and citations is an excellent method for finding out which other works cite an article and which sources an article is based on. With this technique, you do not need to brainstorm a lot of keywords; instead, you work from key sources you already know.

By combining reference and citation searches, you can build a thorough and structured literature search. This approach is especially useful when writing literature reviews or overview articles, or when keyword-based searches do not give the results you need.

There are several exciting ways to search using references. Here, we focus on citations, which look forward in time, and references, which look backwards in time.

Who has cited an article – newer sources?

Imagine you have an important article – a key text. It might be a piece from your syllabus or one recommended by your lecturer. By finding citations, you can see which other works have cited that article – often called cited by in article databases.

This technique is useful if you want to find what has been written on the topic since the article was published, or if you are looking for criticism of it. Use tools such as Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar to perform this type of search.

What is the article based on – older sources?

When you search by references, you go in the opposite direction. You examine which publications your key article has cited by reviewing its reference list – the sources it builds upon.

This technique is ideal for gaining an overview of the works that have shaped your key article.

Visu­al­ising lit­er­at­ure as a timeline

Ima­gine the lit­er­at­ure as a timeline: if you want to find new­er texts, per­form a cita­tion search; if you want to find older lit­er­at­ure, look through the ref­er­ence list.

Who cites whom?

Use cita­tion data­bases to find out. Here are some of the on­line re­sources we re­com­mend for ref­er­ence-based searches.

Scopus
Scopus is our fa­vour­ite re­source for this type of search. It of­fers so many fea­tures that once you start ex­plor­ing, you will not want to stop. Scopus cov­ers a wide range of sub­jects and in­cludes power­ful ana­lyt­ic­al tools, mak­ing it pos­sible to track cita­tions, au­thor im­pact and the de­vel­op­ment of re­search areas over time.
Try Scopus
Web of Sci­ence
Web of Sci­ence cov­ers a lot of re­search areas. Its strengths lie in its high-qual­ity con­trol and ex­tens­ive his­tor­ic­al cov­er­age, mak­ing it par­tic­u­larly valu­able for loc­at­ing older but in­flu­en­tial art­icles.
Try Web of Science
So­cial Sci­ence Cita­tion In­dex
A sub-data­base of Web of Sci­ence fo­cus­ing on so­cial sci­ence dis­cip­lines such as so­ci­ology, psy­cho­logy, eco­nom­ics, edu­ca­tion and polit­ic­al sci­ence. Its strength lies in its in-depth cov­er­age of so­cial sci­ence journ­als, which are of­ten un­der­rep­res­en­ted in oth­er data­bases.
Try Social Science Citation Index

Save the sources you find

Use a ref­er­ence man­age­ment tool to save all the use­ful sources you dis­cov­er. That way, you will not need to search for them again, and it is easi­er to in­sert cita­tions and cre­ate ref­er­ence lists in your as­sign­ments.