Citation Chaining

What are Citation Chaining & Citation Mapping

Citation Chaining and Citation Mapping are two common techniques used to explore scholarly literature and trace the development of ideas and research trends.

Citation chaining helps you find papers by following citations through a chain of scholarly articles. It helps you trace the development of a research idea or theory over time.

Method:

usually start with a "perfect" article in hand (also called "seed" article)
can be in two directions: Backward searching and forward searching based on this perfect article

Tools:

Library's PowerSearch, Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, Semantic Scholar, etc.
Learn more from Citation Chaining Tools

Backward searching

finds articles in the references within the perfect article to see what prior research it is based on
helps you trace classical and foundational studies

Forward searching

finds articles that have cited the perfect article after its publication
helps you trace the latest development on the topic

Citation Mapping

Citation mapping uses a more visual approach to find papers through a network of citations and citation analysis between scholarly articles. It helps you identify key publications and authors, and understand the trends of a research field.

Method:

can start with one or a set of articles or a research topic
use an online tool or software to generate citation maps of articles

Tools:

CiteSpace, VOSviewer - to get an overview of a research field
ResearchRabbit, Connected Papers, Inciteful, Litmaps - to get more papers based on one or a few relevant papers, or a topic search
Learn more from Citation Mapping Tools

Citation mapping

finds articles through citation network
helps you identify key stuides or researchers in a field (ususally represented by larger nodes)
helps you understand the trends of a field through clusters of articles (papers on similar topic are spatially closer)