A cited reference search identifies articles and other resources that have cited a previously published work in the bibliography.  In some databases cited reference searching identifies articles that make reference to and/or include an illustration of a work of art, a music score, letters and diaries, or other primary resources (implicit citations in Web of Science.) Use cited reference searching to:

• to determine who has cited specific papers or authors
• to discover how an idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, corrected, or developed over time
• to identify seminal papers
• to identify other researchers with common interests
• as a means of assessing the impact of an individual's publications for purposes of promotion and tenure
• as an indicator of a publication's influence.

Every cited reference search should include these two sources: Web of Science and Google Scholar.  Including all disciplines, these two sources are the most comprehensive in their coverage.

Web of Science: provides interdisciplinary coverage of almost 12,000 high impact journals from around the world.  Marquette's subscription covers 1980 to the present.  For articles written before 1980, you can find out the number of citing articles but you can only view the records of those published after 1979. Web of Science includes three citation indexes:

• Science Citation Index Expanded,
• Social Sciences Citation Index, and
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

Google Scholar: search for journal articles, books, theses, abstracts, and court opinions in a number of disciplines. Sources include academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, and university web sites. Many references include a Cited by link that identifies other resources that cite a particular paper. Note that Google Scholar may include more than one version of articles, some of which may be preliminary, and there are likely to be duplicates in the cited by references for individual papers.

In addition to these two major sources, a few other fairly comprehensive sources can also be used to search for citing documents.

For more information instructions on how to search these databases click on the Top Two Resources page

Many discipline oriented databases offer cited reference searching and should be used in conjunction with The Top Two.  These sources are identified on the broad discipline oriented tabs at the top of this Guide.  Remember that research from one field may have relevance to and be cited in research in other fields.  View these tabs for descriptions of databases in various disciplines:

The Top Two - Interdisciplinary Sources everyone should use.

Humanities Sources

Science/Technology/Engineering/Medicine Sources

Social Science Sources

No single source will locate all citing sources  You should use multiple databases.

• Web of Science and Google Scholar are the most comprehensive and recommended for all cited reference searches.
• Discipline oriented databases may located additional citing references.
• Works cited in book chapters are not as well covered as works cited in journal articles.

Not every database includes citing/cited reference information, those that do will have some overlap.

• Use the tabs in this guide to identify the best databases for your discipline.
• Import/export citing references into a bibliographic manager like RefWorks or EndNote, a spread sheet or Word document to compare for duplicates.
• Compare/merge the results to eliminate duplicate cites to the same article.

Begin with complete and accurate information. 

• If searching for citations to all works of an author: complete first, last and middle name or initial, including co-authors.
• If searching for citations to a specific publication: authors’ name(s), the full journal title, year, volume, issue, pages and article title.

You are searching the ‘References’ portion of an article, book chapter, etc. which follow various citation styles and with occasional errors in spelling and numbers.  Look for:

• variations of author’s name, coauthor names
• variations on journal titles & abbreviations
• variations in year, volume, page numbers