Library Guides: Materials Science Graduate Seminar: Cited Reference Searching

Where do I find the most cited journals in my field?

Journal Citation Reports
Source of journal impact factors and subject category rankings for journals indexed in the Web of Science database.
Free account can be created for personalization.
Date Coverage: 1997- date
Maximum Users: Unlimited
Tutorials: http://jcr.help.clarivate.com.proxy.mul.missouri.edu/Content/training-videos.htm
User Guide http://clarivate.libguides.com/home

Where do I find cited reference searching?

Scopus
Database with abstracts and citations of research literature and quality web sources, including journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, abstracts, and patent records. A multidisciplinary resource covering materials from the humanities, sciences and social sciences. Also indexes EMBASE and allows you to locate the most highly cited items and the articles that cite them.
Date Coverage: 1970-present; selected access back to 1823

Maximum Users: Unlimited

Truncation:
Truncation: *; Wildcard: ?

Search Guide: http://help.scopus.com

Tutorial: https://supporthub.scopus.com

Auto Alerts: http://library.missouri.edu/search/databases/alertslist.htm#scopus
Google Scholar
Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Please see Google Scholar & Findit@MU for instructions on adding Findit@MU links to your Google Scholar page.
Date Coverage: NA
Maximum Users: Unlimited
Truncation: Not supported
Academic Search Premier
This multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than an abundance of journals and covers extensive academic disciplines and provides comprehensive content, including PDF back-files, videos, and searchable cited references.
Contains 4,600 journals, including full text for nearly 3,900 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.

Date Coverage:Varies; primarily 1970s-present with some titles covering earlier dates

Maximum Users: Unlimited

Truncation:
Truncation: *; wildcard: ?

Auto Alerts: http://libraryguides.missouri.edu/alerts/ebsco
PubMed
The National Library of Medicine's free article search engine, containing article references from MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, plus publisher-supplied and out-of-scope citations from science and chemistry journals.
CAS SciFinder
Search for chemistry and chemical engineering literature, patents, chemical substances and reactions. SciFinder also includes MethodsNow (synthetic protocols), a predictive retrosynthesis planner, PatentPak patent mapping tool, and NMR spectra content. (1907 - date, with selected coverage back to 1878).
Requires registration using your MU email.
Registration: http://merlin.missouri.edu/sfs/scifinder_web.php

Date Coverage: 1907-date

Maximum Users: Unlimited

Search Guide: http://www.cas.org/support/scifi/htguides.html
Web of Science Core Collection
Web of Science indexes thousands of scholarly journals, books, reports, conferences and more. Citation information and analysis with cited reference searching available. The collection includes Science Citation Index Expanded (1990-present), Social Sciences Citation Index Expanded (1990-present), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1990-present), Conference Proceedings Citation Index (1990-present), Book Citation Index (2005-present), Current Chemical Reactions (1985-present) and Index Chemicus (1993-present).
Date Coverage: Varies by Web of Science collection
Maximum Users: Unlimited
Truncation: *

Cited Reference Searching

What is cited reference searching?

Cited reference searching allows you to locate books and articles that cite a previously published resource. This process allows you to track the research that has been done since the original item was published.

Why use cited reference searching?

To locate current research based on earlier research
To determine influential research
To find out how many times and where a publication is being cited
To find out who is citing a particular paper
To find out how a particular research topic is being used to support other research
To track the history of a research idea
To track the research history of a researcher
To determine how well your own published research is cited for promotion/tenure considerations

What should concern you about cited reference searching?

Citation rates vary widely from field to field and shouldn't be taken at face value, but considered relative to the field of research
Citation rate may be based on a few prolific authors citing each other, including self citations
Citation searching works better for journal articles than books
Cross-disciplinary research may produce fewer citations
Coverage of your particular field in the citation database may be weak
The research may too recent and not widely known, like emerging fields
The quality of the journal producing the citation
Distribution of the citations over time might be more indicative of their importance than an initial high citation count shortly after publication
There is a growing tendency of some researchers to go after topics likely to get into high-impact journals, which jeopardizes creativity, can skew the course or even slow the pace of science
Some journals also cite articles in editorials, reviews, news and other non-research articles to increase the number of cites
There is no guarantee that every paper which ought to be cited will be cited. An un-cited author may be ahead of his peers. Mendel and his genetics work went unappreciated for years