What Research Came Later? Cited Reference Searching
Becoming A Database Whisperer: Using Search Modifiers
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What Research Came Later? Cited Reference Searching
Terms and concepts to know for this lesson:
Citation chaining - tracing the origins of a research idea backwards. What sources did the author use when writing this piece?
Cited reference searching - tracing the impact of a research idea forwards. Who did this author's idea impact? What sources used this work later?
In the previous lesson Why Do I Have To Do That? Scholarship, Attribution, Citation, and Plagiarism, you learned that citations are the proper way of giving credit to the work done by other scholars. However, citations have a more practical value as well - they allow you to trace one source you find to other related sources. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use citation chaining and cited reference searching to find additional resources for your research.
Citation Chaining
Citation chaining is a popular research strategy where you consult the references of a source to see what references that work used. During your research if you find an an article or book that is particularly useful for your topic, this can be a great way to find additional sources that relate to your topic. Citation chains can trace back for decades - see the image below for an example.
Photo credit to Bonnie Swoger, http://undergraduatesciencelibrarian.org/ Links to an external site.
However, citation chaining is limited in that it can only take you into the past - each source you find through it will be older than the original source you found. This can be problematic when conducting research on relatively recent phenomena, or on topics that are changing rapidly.
Cited Reference Searching
Have you ever found an article that matched your research topic perfectly, but was too old? Maybe you found a review article that summarizes and evaluates the current state of knowledge on a certain topic, but you need a primary research article. You look at the references listed in your review article, and, again, they all are older. You want something more recent. Never fear! Cited reference searching is here!
Photo: Steve Jurvetson, 2007.
The following resources allow you to track who has cited a particular article. You'll be able to trace who has either confirmed, refuted or taken the ideas in the original article and applied them in another field of study. You can see how ideas build upon other ideas in the research process and find new developments.
Click on the links below to learn more about cited reference searching in each of these resources:
Conclusion
Citation chaining and cited reference searching are both great methods for finding additional research on your topic. Citation chaining looks "into the past" at the publications the source listed as references, while cited reference searching looks "into the future" at which later publications listed a source as a reference.