Use One Good Article to Find Others

The modules in this section of the tutorial show ways to "look foward" to find newer articles that build on the research in our starting article. The number of newer articles that link back to a starting article also help us make some judgements about the importance of the starting article.

Unlike looking backward for older articles (where we can look at the References section of the article itself), we have no way of looking at our starting article and finding newer, related articles without the use of some online tools to help us. This does make sense if we stop and think about it. At the time an article is published, there is no way to know what other researchers will eventually find it and include it in their reference lists.

For us this means that we need to use online tools to help us "look foward". We'll do this using the Web of Science (once again...such a useful database) and Google Scholar.

• The image below is of the full record for our starting article in the Web of Science database. Note that off to the right side of the full record, there is also a link called Times Cited. That link provides the list of newer items that include our starting article in their References lists.

• The image below is of the record for our starting article in Google Scholar, which uses the link "Cited by" instead of "Times Cited" like in Web of Science. The "Cited by" link provides the list of newer items that include our starting article in their References lists.

Note the difference in the number of newer items that Web of Science and Google Scholar link out to. Each tool covers a different set of journals and Google Scholar includes books (Web of Science tends not to include books in its Times Cited numbers).

When researchers refer to (or cite) the work of other researchers, they are telling the reader that these publications are important to the research topic in question. If lots of researchers cite the same article, it means that the article has important information to communicate. This idea of article importance can help the new researcher (including you, as students) decide what articles are more valuable to read first.
 

We can use "Times Cited" to help us sort articles so that the ones that have been cited most often by others sit at the top of our results lists.

1. Look up your starting article in the Web of Science database.
2. If you find the article (might not always happen), open the full version of the record by clicking on the title. 
   Click the Times Cited link to look forward at the newer items that include your starting article in their References or Cited Works section.
3. Do you find any articles in that list that look relevant to your topic? 
4. If your starting article had 0 Times Cited, why might that be? [HINT: Think about how old your starting article is and if that might impact Times Cited in any way).