Cited Reference Searching - Web of Knowledge / Web of Science

Search ISI Web of Science/Knowledge

Note: Web of Knowledge includes Web of Science (Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index).
On the opening search page, you can choose a subset or search all databases.
 

You've searched indexes before, in order to find articles that have been published on your topic. Cited reference searches take the process a step further. Once you know of an article, you can find out who cited this article and who cited similar articles. The Web of Knowledge offers this type of searching.

The essence of cited reference searching is in the bibliography (references) section of an article. Web of Knowledge links papers together based on the references cited within the papers.

Cited Reference searching is valuable because it shows how articles are inter-related and follows the progress of ideas through publications. Through a cited reference search, you can discover how a known idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved, extended, or corrected.

Web of Knowledge allows us to do 3 things from the full record of an article (the "parent").

1. Look at the papers cited by it - Cited References. (A traditional index search often does this, too.)
2. Look at the papers which have cited it - Times Cited. (A few traditional indexes are starting to do this now.)
3. Look at papers which have cited the same references - Related Records.

How to Use Cited Reference Searching

Start by using a regular search to find an article of interest. Search for an author, a title, a topic, or a combination of criteria on the search screen. Look at the full record of an article you consider relevant; this will be the parent paper.

On the right side of the screen is a blue box containing the special links.

Times Cited
See a list of articles that have cited this parent paper - articles that were published after this one. A brief list is shown, with links to see the full records. You can also create an "Alert" that will inform you when a new paper cites it. If a paper is cited many times, it's probably an important paper - and likely an older one. Perhaps it provided information that was controversial or that started a new way of thinking.
Related Records
The link for Related Records finds other papers that cite at least one document cited by the parent paper. Related Records are ranked according to the number of references they share with the parent record, so those with the most matches appear at the top of the list. The assumption behind Related Records searching is that articles citing the same works have a subject relationship, regardless of whether their titles, abstracts, or keywords contain the same terms. The more cited references two articles share, the closer this subject relationship is. Related Records are an excellent way of finding "more like this" articles. For example: Assume your query honeybee* AND hearing found an article by WH Kirchner titled "Hearing in Honeybees - The Mechanical Response of the Bees Antenna to Near-Field Sound" that is highly relevant to your field of inquiry. You click Related Records to find other papers that cite identical references. You observe that some of the Related Records were among the results found by your initial search, but many of them were not because their titles and abstracts do not contain the words honeybees and hearing. However, they do contain words like bees, honey-bee, honey bee, acoustical, communication, signals, and other terms synonymous with or closely related to terms in your initial query.
Cited References
Click on the link to the number of Cited References to get a list of the articles cited in this parent paper. Most of these are also "clickable", so that you can view the full record for each of them. If you prefer, you can view these cited articles in a map format, which shows relationships.

Example of a Full Record

Below is an image of a full record in the Web of Knowledge, with arrows to show the links. This item is the parent paper, with links to:

• to locate the full article,
• save the citation in RefWorks,
• Times Cited,
• Related Records, and
• Cited References.

The record also provides an abstract (description of the article), publisher, and author affiliation information.

This was a brief introduction to Cited Reference searching. For more information on using Web of Knowledge, see their training options (including videos) available on the ISI website.

Personal Account - MyResearcher ID

Web of Knowledge also offers the option to create an account for yourself. If you do this, you can take advantage of advanced features, such as saving searches and setting up "alerts" to inform you when something happens.

It also allows you to use the mobile version of the site.

Click on MyResearcher ID and "Want to know more?" for details.

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Last Modified: August 4, 2011
Maintained by , Thomas J. Bata Library.