Cited reference searching is a way of locating additional articles relevant to your topic without relying on keyword searching.

This method of searching allows you to take a key article on your topic, perhaps an article given to you by your supervisor, and see if any other researchers have used that article and included it in their reference list.

A cited reference database such as Web of Science enables you to retrieve information by the usual means, e.g., author, subject term, journal title, but also via reference lists included within articles.

Because the cited reference search option retrieves instances of a specified key article in the bibliographies of all subsequent articles in the database, it provides the ability to search forward in time. With other databases, the process of finding an important article and checking the references cited at the end takes you further back in time. This difference is one of the factors that make cited reference searching such an important research tool.

Cited reference searching allows you to:

• Discover who has cited a key article since it was published.
• Check the number of times an article has been cited.
• Follow the development or methodology of an idea.       
• Uncover related work in your field.
• Analyse the impact of key publications.
• Track the research of colleagues or competitors.
• Discover who is citing your research and how it is being used to support current
  research.
• Find relevant articles on topics or subjects that are difficult to express in a few
  keywords.

Web of Science was the first database to provide cited reference searching. Scopus, SciFinder and Google Scholar now also provide this option.

Any full text databases may allow for cited reference searching - check for a 'Cited By' option when the article record is displaying – but keep in mind that if the full text database is limited to a particular publisher, eg. IEEE, Wiley etc, the search will only pick up cited references within a limited group of journals.

Citation searching in Web of Science.

Tutorial opens in a new window - Conducting a Cited Reference Search

For other tutorials, including What is Cited Reference Search and Citation Alerts see Web of Science Training.

Citation searching in Scopus.

Tutorial opens in a new window - Scopus - Cited Reference searching

To retrieve articles citing a reference in Google Scholar, click on the Cited By link below the reference.