Chain Search

Use the bibliographies of books or articles to further your search process

This search method is called chain search and works by using the bibliography of an already-known book or article to find other relevant books or articles on the same topic.

When chain searching, you’ll only find books and articles older than the book or article you used as a starting point.

This means that chain searches always go back in time.

If you want to look forward in time, use citation search instead.

Citation search

Look forward in time by using the citations of your article – that is, find out who cited the article you’re using.

You can use the Scopus or Google Scholar databases.  

Start by searching for the title of your article in either database. In Scopus you can then click on ”Citations”, while you would click on ”Cited by” in Google Scholar, situated under each result.

After clicking on either ”Citations” or ”Cited by” you will get a list of articles that have all cited your article.

While citation search goes forward in time to show newer research, it can also be unspecific since the citations come from many different bibliographies opposed to chain search where you only have to consider one bibliography.

So, while citation search offers newer research on your topic it can also present too broad a selection of literature.