Citation chaining

About citation chaining

Citation chaining is a method for finding resources that you may not find using a traditional, structured search strategy. It involves: 

• finding resources cited in your key articles 
• finding resources that cite your key articles. 

It is most effective when you haven’t found many articles in your database search.

How to use citation chaining

There are 3 stages to conducting a search using citation chaining: 

In your initial search, you will likely find a small number of articles that are particularly relevant and important to your research question. 

Choose a small number of these articles (around 2–4) as your key articles and find them using Library catalogue search.

Look at the reference list of a key article to find resources that the authors used in their work.  

If the "cited in this" icon is included next to your key article in the Library catalogue, click on it to conduct backward chaining:

If the icon is not present, click through to the article record.

Backward chaining will always find articles published before your original key article.

You can also look for articles that cite your key resource in their reference list.

If the "citing this" icon is included next to your key article in the Library catalogue, click on it to conduct forward chaining:

If the icon is not present, click through to the article record and select “Times Cited” or “Cited By” (or similar). The exact phrase varies according to which database hosts the resource.

Forward chaining will always find articles published after your original key article.