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Health Sciences--Advanced Search Guide

Citation Tracing - the Article Time Machine

When you look at the references cited in a particular article, you are looking back in time. All cited articles were, necessarily, published before the current article.

When you look for articles that cite the article you have, you are looking forward in time. All citing articles were, necessarrily published after the current article.

Citation tracing in databases

Some databases are now making it easier to trace citations backwards and forwards.

CINAHL, SocIndex, and PsycInfo give both 'Cited References' (past articles) and 'Times Cited in this Database' (more recent articles).

Clicking on the 'Cited References' and 'Times Cited' links will bring up lists, some of which may have links to abstracts or full text. Not all articles will have both (or either) option. You may need to look some articles up by journal title (see box at right).

You can sometimes limit the search to References Available, using the checkboxes available under the search boxes or on the left on the results page.

Citation tracing in Google Scholar

Google Scholar has 'Cited By' links which will give you links to articles that cite the article you are looking for (more recent articles).

See the Google Scholar Guide for accessing library subscriptions via GS.

Google Scholar Search

Microsoft Academic Search - Citations and more

Transcript coming soon

Do we have a journal?

If you have reference or citation, you can check if we have a subscription or other access to the journal by looking the journal title in our Journals by Title Search. On the Library Home Page, click on Journals by Title and enter the title of the journals (most abbreviations are OK, too). If we have access, it will give you the years we have available, plus a link or note about format and where the journal is located. 

If you have a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) you can enter that instead on the same tab. If you get no results for a DOI, try the title as a backup.