A Suggested Approach
There are many ways to locate literature for your literature review. In a traditional search, topic keywords are used to find relevant papers; however, some databases link citations between publications, allowing researchers to search via the references and citations to papers, providing a relational or association-based view of the literature.
Citation-based searching can be done either retrospectively or prospectively:
3.1 Expand Your Search: Citation Databases (Part 1)
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Citation databases can help you expand your literature search by allowing you to follow citations between publications. |
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Each of the three key citation databases has its own operating system and content coverage. There is no one database that indexes all scholarly literature, so you may need to search all three to ensure the comprehensiveness of your search. |
Watch this video to learn more about citation databases:
3.1 Expand Your Search: Citation Databases (Part 2)
There are two main ways to expand your search using citation databases.
1. Author Search
Search for a key researcher to view all of the research an author has published which is indexed in a source/location (i.e. Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar)
2. Document Search
Search for a key paper and use the built-in links to view the references (i.e. backward citation searching) or the citations (i.e. forward citation searching)
If you would like to know more about how to use the citation tracking features to identify and track key authors and papers in your field(s), Please see Sections 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 below
3.2 Author Search
This section will demonstrate Author searching in Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. For Document searching, please see Section 3.3 (Backward Citation Searching) and Section 3.4 (Forward Citation Searching) below.
3.3 Document Search: Backwards Citation Searching
Backwards Citation Searching is used to identify the body of literature that has been drawn on in a seminal paper(s). The research a paper has cited in their reference list provides you with a picture of the ideas, theories and thinking at that time which helped shape that particular research.
Watch this video to learn more about searching backwards in time to find related research:
3.4 Document Search: Forwards Citation Searching
Forward Citation Searching is used to find new research which has drawn on or cited a seminal paper. The number of citations to a paper (and also the nature of those citations, i.e. who is citing the paper and what they are saying about it) gives you an idea about the importance of that research and the influence that research has had on the development of the field since its publication.
Watch this video to learn more about searching forwards in time for new research: