Citation Searching

Web of Science consists of five databases containing information from thousands of scholarly journals and, just recently, conference proceeding, in all areas of research, including: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Science Citation Index Expanded. In addition to cited reference searching, you can search these databases by topic, author, source title, and address. It is an excellent database to use for searching interdisciplinary topics.

Let's start by conducting a basic search for articles by Jerry Wasserman.

Enter: wasserman j* in the search box and change the index to Author.
In Editions above, limit your search to Arts & Humanities Citation Index and click Search. (Note: Web of Science uses only initials for first names of authors and an asterisk will broaden your search.)
You will get over 100 results which you can refine by Document Types (e.g. Book Reviews, Articles etc.) or Web of Science Categories (e.g. Literature, Theater etc.).
Finally, you can use Sort by at the top of the list and adjust your results from Date: newest first to Citations: highest first.
Click on the article Performing Autobiography: Contemporary Canadian Drama. On the right you can see who cited this article and also find other relevant articles by clicking on View Related Records. This allows you to analyze the results in various ways.

Web of Science also allows you to conduct an author search. Say you want to look for publications by Kirsty Johnston. Go back to the main search screen and this time make sure you click on RESEARCHERS instead of DOCUMENTS. Enter the last name (JOHNSTON) and first initial (K) and click Search. Refine results by Organizations (University of British Columbia) and click Refine. Click on Johnston, Kirsty to view her publication record and open individual articles to view their citations, cited references, related records etc.

You can also do cited reference search in the Web of Science database. Assume you discovered an interesting journal article or a book, and you want to find other articles that have cited 'your' article or book. For example, try a citation search for Judith Butler's 1988 article in Theatre Journal "Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory".

On the main search screen select CITED REFERENCES
In corresponding boxes enter Cited Author (Butler J*), Cited Work (Theatre Journal) and Cited Year(s) (1988)
Click on Search
You can now explore over 1,000 works that have cited "Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory" since 1988 and Refine results by applying filters of your choice.

For more information, see Strategies for getting results.