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Finding Articles that Cite Earlier Articles


Citation searching allows you to move forward in time by finding newer papers that cite earlier papers. SCI is part of the Web of Science online system produced by Thomson-ISI.

For information on counting your total citations, see the Counting Your Citations page.

For information on searching for citing articles in SciFinder Scholar, see the SciFinder FAQ page.

Connect to Web of Science U.T. restricted

The UT System subscribes to Web of Science data back to 1975. The printed SCI is still retained in the Life Science Library for earlier years (1961-96) of coverage.

Sample Question: You want to find papers that have cited a paper written by Robert B. Woodward et al. that appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol.73, 1951, pp.2403-04.

  1. Follow the link to Web of Science or Science Citation Index on the Databases and Indexes pages, or click on the link above.

  2. Click on "Cited Reference Search".

    • Enter the last name and initial(s) of the first author of the paper in question in the CITED AUTHOR field. (Don't use full first names, or commas. Allow for multiple initials by typing an asterisk after the first initial: WOODWARD R*)
    • Due to the large number of variant abbreviations and typos, you should usually leave the CITED WORK field blank.
    • Enter a year or range of years in the CITED YEAR field. It doesn't matter if the cited article is older than 1975.
    • Click Search.

  3. You will see an index list of cited articles. Note the rigid format of the entries, which causes them to sort first by author, then by journal abbreviation and then by date: 

    
 Times
 Cited  Cited Author          Cited Work              Year     Volume    Page    

   1    WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     405
   1    WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     1547
   1    WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     1548	
   1    WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     2043	
   57   WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     2403	
   2    WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     3546	
   26   WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     3547	
   25   WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     3548
   30   WOODWARD RB	          J AM CHEM SOC	          1951	    73	     4057

    Scan the list carefully for typos and variant postings. You'll need to note the page numbers and volume number of the entry to verify it's the exact paper you're looking for. "Cited Work" titles are always abbreviated, sometimes not very consistently. Page numbers and volume numbers can be inaccurate or missing altogether. The number to the left of the entry is the total number of articles in the full database that cited that particular entry. In this example, the entry with page number "2043" is probably a typo, so that should be selected as well as the correct entry below it.

  4. Select all desired index entries, set any language or document-type limits at the bottom of the page, and then click Finish Search.

    5. A list of Citing Papers is retrieved. This list can be re-sorted and analyzed in various ways. The Find it at UT button in each entry will take you to a menu of options for finding that document in UT's electronic or print collections.

    The number of records actually retrieved is sometimes less than the number shown in the index listing. This is because the Index includes all citations in the entire SCI database back to 1945, whereas the retrievable ones are only those since 1975, UT's starting year of coverage. In this example, of the 58 articles indicated in the index display, only 25 citing articles were published after 1975.

  5. View full records by clicking on a paper's title. From the full record, you can also look at the citing paper's reference list, or find Related Records citing the same things. The Times Cited figure gives the number of citations to this paper in the subscribed years of the database. (This number often undercounts citations, so use it with caution.)

  6. Click Log Out when you're done.

More information on citation searching