Literature searching

There are other resources available which can be used to complement your database searches. 

Citation and reference tracking involves selecting key studies you have found and, for each of these, searching for studies that have cited them and looking for references that your key studies have used themselves. This may help you to find studies that you did not find through your database searches.

Two good resources for citation and reference tracking are Cited Reference Search (within the Web of Science database) and Scopus.

Citation & Reference Tracking using Scopus

Citation & Reference Tracking using Web of Science

You can browse the contents of key journals, relevant to your research question, to see if you can find studies not found in your database searches.

This is necessary because:

• All journals are not indexed on all databases
• Additional parts of journals such as supplements may not always be indexed in databases
• Studies may be missed when searching databases, as indexing terms are frequently introduced or updated.

To discover influential authors, Scopus and Web of Science both allow topic searches to be analysed by author.

Scopus

Search for your topic from the 'documents' search screen > Analyze search results > Documents by  author. 

Web of Science

Search for your topic from the search screen > Analyze results > Author .  Once you have found an author, select their name to see the publications they have authored.

Find publications by specific authors

To find publications from a single author, use the author search screens in Scopus or Web of Science.

To search for an author in Google Scholar, open the menu > advanced search > enter the name in the 'return articles authored by' box.

Searching for an authors' ORCiD profile may also help find their complete list of publications and academic activities. ORCiD stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. As a personal identifier, it is not connected to any institution and will therefore contain records of publications made throughout a researcher’s career. 

Contact authors and experts

Asking knowledgeable experts for information on relevant papers and studies may help uncover extra articles or unpublished studies. For each person you contact, keep a record of the date and any information they recommend.

It is worth contacting authors of key studies you find to ask about other research they can point you to.

• Contact details can sometimes be found in articles
• Social networking sites e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter
• Research networks e.g. Research Gate, Academia.edu