Using citations from one source to find other sources is a powerful and efficient way to search both for what has been published before and what has been published after. The tactic of looking both ways is known as chasing citations (also known as forwards and backwards chaining.) This guide will help you do that effectively.
1. Start with a known source, particularly a scholarly book or an article recommended or assigned to you. Use it to see who has cited it since it was published.
2. Do a topic search and find an article right on topic. If it is recent, use the references cited in the source for similar material. If it is older, use search tools like Google Scholar or Web of Science to see if and where it has been cited.
3. Pay attention to reporting on your topic in blogs, social media, documentaries, and news sites. Find names of experts interviewed or mentioned in these reports. Then, use the names of those researchers and scholars to find their work using search tools.
Databases are essential tools for beginning your research. Many databases have started to add links to "Cited by" searches to article records. In most cases, this will lead you to articles, or sometimes books, that cite the article only found within the database (like Web of Science). If you go to the website for the journal that contains your article, you are more likely to find links to everywhere it has been cited, as well as when using search tools like Google Scholar
