Chaining (sometimes called citation mining) is a research technique that uses bibliographies and citations to expand your search. Chaining is especially helpful when you're having a hard time finding enough articles on your topic.
To get started:
- Find the references, works cited, or bibliography of an article that is either on topic or adjacent to your topic. These sources were gathered by the author(s) over a period of months or years and can often contain great articles that you wouldn't find using databases alone.
- In the bibliography, review the titles of the articles, book chapters, and other sources for potentially useful content.
- Check OneSearch (on the library's homepage) to see if we have copies of the articles, book chapters, or books.
- If we don't have a copy, request one for free via our Interlibrary Loan service.
Advanced Chaining with Google Scholar
Chaining usually involves moving backwards along a path of references but, using Google Scholar, we can see who has built on to someone's work since it was published. Underneath each result in Google Scholar, you will see a link that says Cited by [#] if an article, book, or book chapter has been cited since it was published.
To get started:
- Go to Google Scholar.
- Type in the title of a relevant article.
- Click on the Cited by link.
- Review the list of results.
- If there are too many results that don't look relevant, you can re-focus your search by clicking on the Search within citing articles option at the top of the results list and adding keywords. This option lets you search just these articles for something specific.
