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Citation Chaining

My name is Rui Wang, Social Sciences Librarian at CMU library. At the reference desk, or when I meet students for research consultations, I find that some students have problems finding relevant materials for their topics. For example, they might only be able to find one article they really think is relevant. In such cases, I help them to revise their search strategies to find new sources. One of my suggestions is to us that one article as a starting point and look for the citations listed at the end of the publication to get more relevant materials for their topics. This technique is called citation chaining. Students find this technique is quite useful. These citations lists are typically referred to as “references” “works cited” “bibliographies” or “endnotes.”

What Are Citations?

Now, you may be wondering, what are citations, references, and/or bibliographies? In the context of scholarly publication, a list of sources cited in the text of an article or book are usually called references, works cited, bibliographies, or endnotes. These lists are named differently, depending upon the conventions of the different style manuals. For example, in APA, the list is called “references,” whereas in MLA, it is referred to as “works cited.” To some extent, these words are synonymous, but they all contain citations.

Using Citations to Find Other Resources

Let’s take a look at an example. If you were researching romantic relationships in adolescence, you might be able to find additional relevant sources by looking through the references from a relevant article. The article “Gender and the Meanings of Adolescent Romantic Relationships: A Focus on Boys” published in the American Sociological Review has 85 sources cited as references. These citations are all related to the article in different ways, so taking a close look at these citations could help you find sources you might want to use for your topic.

To look for these citations, the first step is to identify the type of materials being cited. Is the citation for a book or a journal article? The second step is to use library search tools to find out if the library has access to the materials cited.

Finding Books Using Citations

Let’s take a look at the second citation in the article “Gender and the Meanings of Adolescent Romantic Relationships: A Focus on Boys”:

Blau, Peter M. 1964. Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: Wiley.

In this case, Blau, Peter M. is the author, the date of the publication is 1964, Exchange and Power in Social Life is the title of the book, New York is the place of the publication, and Wiley is the publisher. Based on these elements, we can conclude that this is a citation for a book. In order to find this book, you can to use the Libraries’ catalog on the library web site.

From the library homepage, click on the link that says Centra: Libraries’ Catalog. Once in the catalog, click on the tab that says “title”. Next, type the title of the book into the search box. If you perform a title search for Exchange and Power in Social Life, you will find that the library does have a copy of this book.

Finding Book Chapters Using Citations

Now, let’s move to another citation.

Brown, B. Bradford, Candice Feiring, and Wyndol Furman. 1999. “Missing the Love Boat:
        Why Researchers Have Shied away from Adolescent Romance.” Pp. 1—18 in The
        Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence, edited by W. Furman, B. B.
        Brown, and C. Feiring. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Followed by the authors’ names and the publication year, there is a quoted title “Missing the love boat: why researchers have shied away from adolescent romance.” Pp. 1-18 is the page numbers of this title. Please pay special attention to the italicized book title, The Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence. After this italicized title, three editors’ names are listed, and then the publication place and the publisher. So, what type of publication is represented by this citation? This is a citation for a chapter in an edited book.

The title within the quotation marks is the chapter title. The three names at the beginning are the authors of the chapter. The italicized title is the name of the book. The three names listed after the words, “edited by,” are the editors of this book.

In order to find this publication, do another title search in Centra.

When searching for the publication, you should search for it by the book title rather than the chapter title because the catalog generally does not recognize the chapter title. If you search for the chapter title, you will not be able to find this book.

When searching for the publication, you should search for it by the book title rather than the chapter title because the catalog generally does not recognize the chapter title. If you search for the chapter title, you will not be able to find this book.

Finding Articles Using Citations

Here is a third citation:

Brown, Susan L. 2000. “Union Transitions among Cohabitors: The Significance of
       Relationship Assessments and Expectations.” Journal of Marriage and Family
       62:833–46.

After the author’s name and publication year, there is a quoted title “Union transitions among cohabitors: the significance of relationship assessments and expectations.” Next, there is an italicized title, Journal of marriage and the family, followed by a volume number and page numbers.

Please note that unlike a book citation, there is no publication place and publisher in this citation. This means that this is a citation for a journal article. The title in quotations is the title of the article; the italicized title is the title of the journal.

The best way is to find this article is to use the Citation Linker on the library web site. Citation Linker uses the same software as the “Find it!” feature that is used to locate full text articles from within library databases.

On the library web site, click the link for citation linker under the “Research Tools” section. Enter as much information as you can into the fields. You can find the exact article by entering the journal title, publication date, volume number, and the page number.

In this case, it is possible to access the full text article through two databases. Follow the links in order to load a PDF file containing the article.

More Tips For Finding Articles

You may notice that the books and journal titles are all italicized. A good tip is to always search for the italicized title when you use the library catalog to do a title search, because a title of book chapter or journal article is not searchable in the library catalog.

These are the three common type citations of scholarly publications. Remember to identify the type of a citation first. Is it a book, a chapter in an edited book, or a journal article? And then, you will be able to use either the library catalog to get the book, or use the Citation Linker to locate the full text journal article.

What Are Forward Citations?

Please beware that there is a limitation when you look up citations from a publication. It is not possible for a publication in 2006 to include citations published after 2006. This means you are only able to look for “backward” citations. When you look for the most relevant materials for your topic, you don’t want to miss the current publications. There is another resource available through the library’s website that allows you to search for “forward” citations, i.e. citations that are related to a particular article that were published after the article’s publication date.

How to Find Forward Citations

From the main library website, click on the link called “Find an Article”. Next, click on the link for “Citation indexes”. This will reveal a drop-down menu with a link to “Web of Science”. Follow this link. Underneath the tabs, click the link that reads “Cited Reference Search”. If you use the article from the first example, enter the author’s name: Giodano, pc. To enter the journal the article is from, click on the link to the journal abbreviation list underneath the “Cited Work” field. This should open in a new window. From here you can look up the journal (in this case American Sociological Review) and copy and paste the abbreviation (in this case AM SOCIOL REV) into the “Cited Work” field. Next enter the publication year (2006) and click search. Once you get your results, click the link “View Record”. This should show you the list of all of the articles that have cited this article since it was written in 2006.

A Special Note About Forward Citations

When you use citation indexes to track forward citations, please remember that you can only track journal articles, not books. Also, the article cannot be too recent as there is a period of delay between when an article is published and when it will appear in citation indexes.

Experienced researchers and graduate students regularly use their research leads to chain the relevant and important literature and studies. It is recommended that undergraduate students consult their professors and librarians to track down the most important and relevant citations for their research topics.

Citation chaining has been a long tradition in the scholarly world. It can also be a useful technique to benefit undergraduate students’ research.