Finding Cited and Citing Articles

Table of Contents

Definition of Cited and Citing Articles
What's Important about Cited and Citing Articles?
Introduction to Web of Science
Finding Citing Articles in Web of Science
Finding Cited Articles in Web of Science

Definition of Cited and Citing Articles

Say you write an article, Article A. In your article, you refer to Article B and you add the citation for Article B to your reference list. In this case, Article A is the citing article and Article B is the cited article.

What's Important about Cited and Citing Articles?

Cited and citing articles allow you to follow the development of a theory, methodology, area of research, or work of a particular author. For example, if you were looking at Article A about a particular GIS and wanted to know about the system's earlier versions, then look at the cited articles in the reference list to find the history of the GIS. If you wanted to know about further development of the GIS in Article A, look for citing articles, those that cite Article A.

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Introduction to Web of Science

Wondering how you're going to find cited and citing articles? Fortunately, there is database called Web of Science that let's you do citation analysis. Web of Science is an abstract database; it contains citations, subject headings and summaries for thousands of journal articles and conference proceedings. The database does more than let you search for the articles and proceedings. Web of Science is special because it will also show you the cited and citing articles for any particular article/proceeding.

Warning: Web of Science does not include every journal in the world, so the article you're searching for may not be included. Also, Web of Science only includes records for articles/proceedings published in 1995 or later. If you need to do citation analysis of an article published before 1995, please contact Erin O'Toole (erin.otoole@unt.edu) for assistance.

Basic instructions for Web of Science are provided below. For more information about Web of Science, please see complete instructions at http://www.library.unt.edu/ris/tutorials/web-of-science/.

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Finding Citing Articles in Web of Science

Assume you have Article A and you want to find out if a faculty member from the University of North Texas has cited Article A in his/her own article. Follow these steps in Web of Science at http://irservices.library.unt.edu/resource.cfm?ai_id=194 to find out:

1. Search for your article using the regular/default Search.
2. Type a keyword from the article title in the first search box, and then select Title from the field drop-down menu on the right.
3. Type the author's last name and first initial followed by an asterisk in the second search box. It will look like this: [Jones H*]. The asterisk is a truncation symbol that forces the database to look for all variations of the author's first name. Select Author from the field drop-down menu on the right.
4. Limit the search to the publication year of your article, e.g. 1998. Look down to Timespan and select the range of from 1998 to 1998 to search for that one year.
5. When the results come up, find your article and click on its title link. At the top right of the next screen, click on the number after Cited by:
   
6. Now you'll have a list of all the citing articles of Article A. Look at Refine Results at the left. Go down that list and click on the arrow pointing at Institutions, and then select more options/values.
   
7. The next screen will have a list of all the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. Use the Sort these by drop-down menu at the right to change the sort order from Record Count to Alphabetical.
8. Select the box to the left of Univ N Texas, and then click on the Refine button at the bottom left of the list.
9. Finally, you'll have a list of the citing articles of Article A which were written by UNT professors!

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Finding Cited Articles in Web of Science

Assume that you want to find the cited articles for Article A. You can simply look at the Reference List to find the cited articles. However, if you want to find them online, it's easier to follow these steps in Web of Science:

1. Search for your article using the regular/default Search.
2. Type a keyword from the article title in the first search box, and then select Title from the field drop-down menu on the right.
3. Type the author's last name and first initial followed by an asterisk in the second search box. It will look like this: [Jones H*]. The asterisk is a truncation symbol that forces the database to look for all variations of the author's first name. Select Author from the field drop-down menu on the right.
4. Limit the search to the publication year of your article, e.g. 1998. Look down to Timespan and select the range of from 1998 to 1998 to search for that one year.
5. When the results come up, find your article and click on its title link. On the next screen, look below the citation and click on the number after References:
6. Finally, you have a list of all the cited articles in Article A that were published in 1995 or later. Cited articles from before 1995 aren't available in Web of Science.

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