Citation Search

East Carolina University
Department of Psychology

Conducting a Citation Search

Go to Joyner Library Electronic Database List.
Click on "W" and then locate "Web of Science."

Click on "Web of Science." Our license allows for only a limited number of users, so you might have to wait for access to this resource. The opening screen will look like this:

Click on "Cited Reference Search." I shall search to see who has been citing the following article:
Dion, K. K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 285-290.

I entered the author's name (using the wildcard character *), the abbreviated journal name (found in the linked list of journal abbreviations), and the year of publication. I then clicked "Search."

Select the article(s) that match that you are seeking. Keep in mind that some of them may represent typos -- like the one that is same year, same volume, same author, same journal, slightly different page. Click on "Finish Search."

821 hits ! Wow. I wish that was my article. Use the "Find It" button to try to locate an article that cited the target article. On some articles there may be a "Full Text" button which allows you to read the citing article within the Web of Science. Clicking on the (link) name of the article takes you to a screen that typically gives the abstract, the contact information for the author, and other such details.

About once I year I use this facility to see who has been citing my research
For CITED AUTHOR, I enter, “WUENSCH K*” and then hit Search. I get several Cited Reference Search Pages, each being a list of cited articles, with the number of hits (citations) for each.

Click "Search."

Clicking on "View Record" gives you more information on the cited article.

Click on "view all # citing articles" gives you a list of the articles that have cited this publication.

You should keep in mind that this utility will only list those articles that are in its current database, and that is not exhaustive. For example, when I checked my citations in March of 2001, it only found 94 citations. In March of 2003 it found 183. It appears to me that it does not include citations from books.
Don't forget to logout when you are done.

If there is a “classic” publication, one that is cited by almost everybody who is doing research in your area of interest, it can be very helpful to do a citation search – that is, find publications that are citing that classic publication. For your first writing assignment, it should be useful to find out who is citing Forsyth’s “A Taxonomy of Ethical Ideologies” (1980, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 175-184). I want you to do exactly that.

Search for publications citing Forsyth’s 1980 article in J PERS SOC PSYCHOL
You will find what looks like several different articles that match your search criteria, but they are probably all the same article, but some persons have cited it incorrectly – for example, citing it as being in volume 38 instead of 39 or starting on page 1175 instead of 175.
Check the boxes for the articles of interest (I checked them all) and then click the search button.
You may be surprised at how many publications have cited Forsyth’s 1980 article, most of them outside of mainstream Psychology.
Try to find several articles which suggest that ethical ideology may be related to a second construct which you would like to research.
Click Log Out to exit the system.

Conducting a Literature Search

Contact Information for the Webmaster,
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch

This page most recently revised on 29. March 2008.