A cited reference search in Web of Science allows you to find out how many times an article or author has been cited by other publications. Web of Science is the standard source for this information, but Google Scholar and other resources also provide citation information and may include citations that are not indexed by Web of Science.

Note: this guide helps you find the number of times an article or author has been cited. If you are interested in finding citing articles in order to follow a topic through time or find related articles, but you aren't necessarily interested in the exact number of times an article has been cited, it's easier to do a Basic Search.

Mount Sinai users should access Web of Science from the Library's home page on the left sidebar under Key Resources, or from the Library's Databases page under the category Impact Factors and Cited Reference Searching.

From Web of Science's main search page click on Cited Reference Search.

Enter the cited author's last name and first initial, followed immediately by an asterisk (*) in the search box. You may enter a middle initial instead of an asterisk, but that might eliminate some results.

If desired, also enter the cited journal title and publication year. Note: journal titles must be entered using ISI's unique abbreviations - check the journal abbreviation list to find yours.

Click Search.

The Citing Articles column at the far right (not shown here) displays the number of times each article has been cited. To see who has cited one individual article, click on the View Record link under Citing Articles.

To see times cited results for more than one reference, check off multiple references and then click Finish Search. This option will also allow you to Analyze a group of references by author, institution, journal name etc.

The Results screen presents a list of articles which each contain a reference to at least one of the articles you indicated.

Use the Analyze Results link to see a breakdown of the citing articles by author, institution, subject area or other attributes.

Note: The Results list of citing articles may contain fewer publications than indicated by the Cited Reference Index screen (where you selected multiple references). It will exclude conference proceedings that cite your article of interest, even though these are counted in the numbers displayed on the Cited Reference Index screen.

See our Web of Science Basic Search guide.

Web of Science provides its own training and support at http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com/.

Librarians are available to support your research. For help with a cited reference search, or to schedule individual assistance, please call (212) 241-7204 or Ask a Librarian.

last updated April 2009