Citation trails for journal articles
July 12, 2015 3:29 PM Subscribe
What is the best tool out there for efficiently examining and searching for all of the journal articles/publications that cite a particular article?
Ideally I would like to be able to start with an article of interest and be able to move forwards and backwards in time to find all of the articles that cite it as well as all of the articles that it cites. I know Google Scholar has this ability somewhat, but I am curious if better tools exist with more features and more content. To provide context, this is to support doctoral research in mechanical engineering.
Ideally I would like to be able to start with an article of interest and be able to move forwards and backwards in time to find all of the articles that cite it as well as all of the articles that it cites. I know Google Scholar has this ability somewhat, but I am curious if better tools exist with more features and more content. To provide context, this is to support doctoral research in mechanical engineering.
Probably Elsevier's Scopus. Scopus is not free but it's likely your institution purchases access. In general, this is a good question to ask the librarians at your library, because many of the tools for doing this kind of thing aren't free, and they'll be able to direct you to what's available.
posted by pullayup at 3:59 PM on July 12, 2015
posted by pullayup at 3:59 PM on July 12, 2015
Best answer: I am a librarian. Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge all have this capability. The latter two require subscriptions. It looks like Engineering Village may have it as well because it's an Elsevier product like Scopus. Definitely ask you librarian as you may have special tools for engineering.
No database does this completely-- gives you every citation every made to an article-- because no database "reads" all the papers/books/dissertations/patents/government reports/white papers/etc being published and their citations. I have read multiple comparative reviews on how well these tools work to find cited references in medicine, pharmacy, pharmaceutics, library science, and other basic sciences supporting medicine, there are significant differences in the reported citation counts and authors all conclude that to get as many citations as possible, use all three together. Most articles of this type tend to focus on a subject area, so it may be worthwhile to look for one in engineering specifically.
posted by holyrood at 4:31 PM on July 12, 2015 [10 favorites]
No database does this completely-- gives you every citation every made to an article-- because no database "reads" all the papers/books/dissertations/patents/government reports/white papers/etc being published and their citations. I have read multiple comparative reviews on how well these tools work to find cited references in medicine, pharmacy, pharmaceutics, library science, and other basic sciences supporting medicine, there are significant differences in the reported citation counts and authors all conclude that to get as many citations as possible, use all three together. Most articles of this type tend to focus on a subject area, so it may be worthwhile to look for one in engineering specifically.
posted by holyrood at 4:31 PM on July 12, 2015 [10 favorites]
In addition to Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library are both large engineering-related databases with their own citation data. Compendex and Inspec are both large engineering-related databases that track citations from Scopus and Web of Science, respectively. Check with your library to see what they subscribe to. Like holyrood says, there is no one place to look.
posted by unknowncommand at 7:21 PM on July 12, 2015
posted by unknowncommand at 7:21 PM on July 12, 2015
Response by poster: Thank you for all of the responses. It is clear that using several databases concurrently is the way to go. I have been digging around the school's library web portal and it appears that I have some level of access to Scopus. OneSearch is another tool being prominently displayed on their webpage. I'll try to go speak to personnel at the library office to see if Web of Knowledge or any other search tools may be available. Thanks again all.
posted by incolorinred at 9:43 PM on July 13, 2015
posted by incolorinred at 9:43 PM on July 13, 2015
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