Finding scientific information: Citation pearl growing strategy

With a citation pearl growing strategy, the starting point is one relevant document. The idea of this search is to find more documents similar to the one already found

• More recent literature than the core article can be found by searching the database for those documents that cite the core document (citing documents, cited by, times cited).

• Literature published prior to the core document can be found by studying the reference list (cited references) of the article.

• New searches can be made with new search terms found in the core document. When looking for new search terms in the core document, it is worth taking a careful look particularly at the title, abstract and the key words used there.

• New searches can be made with the authors' names.

Reference lists and citation databases

The reference list (bibliography) is a list containing all the references that has been cited in the text.

In citation databases the items in reference list are linked to the article references, enabling a user to see a list of publications that have cited a chosen publication.

Using referencing and citation information a researcher can keep track of the attention received by their own articles or those of competitors, keep track of the development and impact of research results or scientific theories, and establish who are the most significant researchers in their field.

Reference information received from one reference database is never complete because it contains only references from articles published by journals indexed in that database.