Bibliographic Tracing
Citation tracing, or bibliographic tracing, is a process in which researchers use existing citation information to track down and identify relevant literature on a particular topic. This involves searching for references cited in existing literature, as well as searching for works that have cited the original sources. The goal of bibliographic tracing is to build a comprehensive and current set of literature on a topic and to identify gaps in the literature.
Looking backward. Finding Cited References
Review the reference lists of the best articles you have found on your topic and look for additional sources that you may have missed. Use the Finding Known Items tab to locate the full text of these sources.
Looking forward. Cited Reference Searching
To find who has cited an article since publication, first locate it in Google Scholar. Under the citation information there will be hyperlinked text that reads Cited By. Clicking this will return all references in Google Scholar that have cited your original article.
- Google Scholar
A search engine that searches only for scholarly literature, including journal articles, books, preprints, etc., on publisher and academic websites.
- Web of Science
Index to articles in scholarly journals and conference proceedings from all fields of study, plus the ability to search these articles' bibliographies by cited author or work. Links to full text are included where possible.