Q. What does "cited reference searching" mean?

A. To identify all the articles (and other documents, if possible) that reference a previously published document.

Q. Why is cited reference searching valuable to research? 

A. We can trace the scholarly conversation.  We can begin to learn which debates drive the conversation and which ideas concern the discipline.  We can identify influential articles and scholars.  We can discern how fields of scholarship developed, cohered, divided, and evolved over time. 

Web of Science/Social Sciences Citation Index and Google Scholar are the major citation indexes.

Step-by-step instructions are included in this guide for conducting a cited reference search using:

• Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) - articles
• Google Scholar - articles and books

Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a large index of social sciences journal articles.  It covers over 2,000 social science journals and selectively includes articles from over 3,000 science and technical journals as relevant.

SSCI is highly valued as one of few citation indexes.  The citations of each article in SSCI are also indexed and cross-referenced.  You can use SSCI to trace citations of a given article, author, or topic over time.

Cited By

Find a list of works that cited a particular work

First, try pasting (in quotes) the title of the article into the main search box. If the article comes up, then click the Times Cited number to see citing papers.

If doing that brings no results, then follow these steps.

1. Select the Cited Reference Search.
2. Fill in the author and publication date information exactly as described in the examples provided in those search boxes (typically the "cited Work" field isn't very useful since these get abbreviated so many different ways).
3. On the next page(s), select all the entries that could be citations for the work you are searching for.
4. Click "Finish Search" at the bottom of the page.
5. The resulting works will all cite the work you searched for.

Google Scholar indexes scholarly material from many publishers and databases, as well as content from author websites. You'll find scholarly articles, books, theses and dissertations, conference papers, and pamphlets.