Chain searching and citation searching are similar in that your starting point is an already known article you use to find other relevant sources. The difference is that in chain searching you look at the article’s list of references and previous research, whereas in citation searching you find out how much the article has been cited by other studies, later research.

Citation searches are only possible in certain databases, for example, Web of Science and Scopus, on condition that the article you are using is indexed in these databases. It is also possible to do citation searches in the search engine Google Scholar.

Chain search and citation search (film 03:26)

Citation Chaining (film 02:40)

This video provides an overview of the research tool citation chaining, including its benefits and limitations.

McMaster Libraries. (2020, July 10). How Library Stuff Works: Citation Chaining [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSE15xcYiOY.

Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)