When searching by keyword or subject term doesn't retrieve what you want in our databases, you can try citation searching.
Citation Searching Explained
Citation searching, sometimes called cited reference searching, refers to
finding articles that have cited a previously published older work (i.e.
tracing research forward).
Citation searching can also include looking at the citations within a
paper (i.e. the bibliography) to trace research backwards.
Why do a Citation Search?
At its simplist level, we assume that most of the items in the bibliography of an article of interest is on the same or similar topic.
Benefits
The number of times a paper is cited in the work of others can be
an indication of its usefulness.
Through a cited reference search, you can discover how a known
idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved,
extended, or corrected.
Citation analysis can also be used to identify emerging areas of
research, identify a field's leading researchers and to assess
research output.
Drawbacks
The use of citation analysis to assess research output is
contentious.
A large number of citations does not necessarily mean the work
should be viewed as authoritative. Work can be cited by other
authors for a number of different reasons and some of the
recognised drawbacks when using citations are:
- negative citation - a work is cited to criticise or correct
- self citation - an author cites their own work
- preferential citing of a brief paper in a prestigious
journal than to a “more comprehensive paper” in a
speciality journal
- journal referees’ recommendations to authors, who
have submitted work for publication approval, to include
reference to the referee’s work
- citation circles - friends citing friends
- it is serials dependent - citation searching/analysis tends to concentrate on output in journals or conference
proceedings and researchers in different disciplines
vary in how much they communicate through these
media.
- restrictions on article length imposed by journal
editors resulting in an author reducing the number of
citations s/he would have originally provided
Likewise, not being cited does not invalidate a work. There are
acknowledged reasons for this:
- work doesn’t have to be cited to have influenced
someone else’s work
- delayed recognition - although work is cited most in the 10 years after its publication, some works may have a longer delay.
- “obliteration by incorporation” I - review articles tend to be cited in preference to the individual papers reviewed and many uncited papers involve supersedure.
E.g. Each new laboratory report by established investigators builds on and/or supersedes their own earlier work. It is not unusual to observe that after a
decade of research, the entire corpus is superseded by
a "review" which is preferentially cited by subsequent investigators
- “obliteration by incorporation” II - incorporation into
a subject’s accepted knowledge such that it can be quoted without the need for citation
- newly published papers may not yet to be cited by others
Text based on: Edinburgh University Library Citation Searching. 6/07)
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