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Search Literature Effectively for Business Research : Citation Chaining

A guide on searching literature effectively for postgraduate business students

Citation Chaining - What is it & Why it matters

Citation chaining helps you quickly find related articles through citations. It is an essential technique to support your literature review process.

You can do backward and forward searching based on an article in hand.

◀◀  Backward searching

A "perfect" article you have in hand

 Forward searching  ▶▶
  • finds articles the author used. These articles are usually called: 

"References", "Cited Articles", "Cited Documents"

  • helps you track classical and foundational studies
  • finds articles who used this article. These articles are usually called:

"Citing Articles", "Citing Documents"

  • helps you track latest development on your topic

Citation Chaining in Databases

Scopus

Navigate to the Cited by or References sections to explore related articles.

Sample record on Web of Science: Aerodynamic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in two Wuhan hospitals (citation information accurate as of 11 Aug 2022)

 

"References (15)"

Find articles cited in this article

(Backward searching)

 

"1013" Citations in Scopus

Find articles that are citing this article

(Forward searching)

 

 

Web of Science

Click on the no. of citations or references to explore related articles.

Sample record on Web of Science: Aerodynamic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in two Wuhan hospitals (citation information accurate as of 11 Aug 2022)

"15" Citations

Find articles cited in this article

(Backward searching)

 

"1,020" Cited References

Find articles that are citing this article

(Forward searching)

 

 

Read the most relevant articles first

The article you have in hand may have hundreds of citations or references, but not all of them are equally important to your research. Those that are appearing in the Discussion part may be more interesting than those appearing in the Introduction part.

These two unique features on Web of Science help you identify these articles.
 

Select citing articles by classification


Citing items by classification feature helps you identify articles by showing if they "support", "differ", or "discuss" the findings in the article in hand. 

Learn more in this post.

Select references in context


Enriched Cited References feature helps you identify articles by showing their location (e.g. Introduction, Discussion) in the article in hand. 

Learn more in this post.

Try these features on this sample article 

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