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What is it?

Cited reference searching is a way of locating books or articles that cite a particular work.  Keeping track of who has cited a given work can help gauge the impact a text has had within or across disciplines. 

Cited reference searching for a known article

One way to do a cited reference search is simply to count the citations to a known work.  Many databases provide citation counts for individual articles. Search for the title of the article, and if the record appears, check to see if citation counts are given. Usually, if the  article has been cited, the database will provide a link to the citing articles, with full-text where available.

Databases that produce citation counts:

  1. Google Scholar
  2. Web of Science
  3. Scopus (Use "View Citations")
  4. Business Source Complete (Use "Cited References")
  5. IEEE Explore

Caveats

  • Different databases produce different citation counts, depending on how well the citing articles themselves have been indexed. 
  • If your article does not have any articles that have cited it, check the publication date; the article may still be very recent.
  • Some databases do not provide complete citation information (e.g. Scopus does not list all citing articles for pre-1996 journals)

Cited reference searching for a known author

You may have an author in mind and wish to find out the total citation count for everything that person has authored.  Several databses can perform this type of search, including:

  • Web of Science (Use "Cited Reference Search")
  • Scopus (Use "Author search")

Scopus and Web of Science also analyze the results of a citation search.  In Web of Science, apply the "Analyze" option.  In Scopus, choose "Analytics."   Generally, it is best to search using author with truncated first initial (e.g. Duxbury L*), because citing authors may make errors in their reference lists, rendering their citations 'invisible' to the searcher.  Note that you can save, email and export citation results. It's also possible to set up citation alerts to receive notices whenever a given author gets cited.

Caveats

  • Results depend on what is in the database: check journal lists to see if the journals you have published in are included.
  • Make sure to search all permutations of a name: last name, last name + first initial, last name + all initials.
  • Cited references are listed by first author only, so make sure you know this information if you are 2nd or 3rd author.
  • Mistakes happen! Make sure to look for all variants of a citation, looking for mistakes in pagination, volume, and year.
  • If you are checking on authors who have published very recently, you may not find many citations yet.

Additional sources of citation information

For citations to works not included in Web of Science, try searching your name (& variants of) + titles or title keywords within:

  • Collection of e-books, such as Google Books, MyiLibrary and NetLibrary
  • Aggregator databases that index full-text of articles (pick up within-text citations, e.g. The author writes, "Smith, in her seminal work on xxxx, argued that...")
  • View our list of databases by subject area, paying particular attention to those that are fulltext.
  • Consider conferences, government reports, and course syllabi that refer to a work
  • Describe qualitatively how a work was received (i.e. in media or on blogs)
  • Computer science topics are well covered by CiteSeer (Research Index)
  • Harzing Publish or Perish: Alternative measures of research impact; used by some faculty in tenure and promotion dossiers

Book Reviews

  • Scholars in the humanities and social sciences often author books or book chapters as the end result of their research. In addition to citation results, the quantity and quality of reviews of this material may function as an important measure of research impact.
  • We subscribe to a number of databases and indexes that allow you to specifically search for book reviews. See our Book Reviews page for links.