When you come across a journal article or piece of research that really interests you, it can be useful to see if any follow-up literature has been produced or to find out whether any other articles have cited the piece you've found. Doing this can help keep you abreast of any subsequent developments in the field as well as broadening the range of relevant literature at your disposal.
There are a number of tools you can check to see if an article has been cited elsewhere.
1. LibrarySearch
The first place to check will be LibrarySearch, the University of Wolverhampton's library catalogue at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/search. Simply type the article title into the main search bar and then on the result screen, look for the double headed arrow icon 'Find sources citing this'.
Clicking on this option will display all the articles within the catalogue which have cited the article you have used.
2. Google Scholar
LibrarySearch mainly returns matches from within our Library collections, so for a wider picture of subsequent citations you could use Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.co.uk). Type the article title in quotation marks in the search box then search. Under each result it shows whether the article has been cited. Click on the Cited by link to be taken to the list of citing sources.
Please note that not all publications are citation tracked by Google's algorithms, so the results you get should be considered a general snapshot of the literature rather than an authoritative list.
3. Scopus
Depending on the subject you are studying, there may be additional bibliographic databases you can use in order to track citations. Scopus is a particularly wide-ranging tool which contains abstract and citation details for peer-reviewed literature in the sciences, arts, humanities and medical fields. Search for the article title and the number of citations are given at the end of the result line. Click on the number listed to view the papers that have referenced that work.
4. Web of Science
Web of Science is a research platform that provides access to an extensive range of reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedings, and other documents in various academic disciplines. When you search for an article title, next to each result it shows whether the article has been cited. Click on the number above Citations to bring up the list of sources.
For further advice on tracking citations, see the linked study guide on Keeping Up To Date.
