Workshopsin Information Skillsand Electronic Resources:

Citation searching exercise

Start up Web of Knowledge (WOK) by selecting it on Oxlip on the Web. At the WOK introductory page click on the lilac button “Connect to ISI WOK” followed by the “go” button to open Web of Science(WOS).

Task 1:

In 1993 D. Weakling published an excellent article in the American Sociological Review entitled “Class-consciousness and political change: voting and political attitudes in the British working class, 1964 to 1970. It was published in vol. 58, pages 382-397.

  1. On the WOS index page check the box against Social Science Citation Index.
  1. Click on Cited Reference Search.
  1. At the next screen enter the author’s name exactly as shown in the example above the box and enter the year of publication. You could also select the journal title using the abbreviation list but this could be time consuming and usually not necessary.
  1. Click on the search button and find the reference to the correct article. (You will see he published two papers in the same journal, one on page 16 the other on 382).
  1. Click on the “view record” link.
  1. Look at the “cited references” link. This gives you all the reference at the end of his paper. How many references are there?
  1. Now look at the “times cited” link. This tells you how many times the paper has been cited since its original publication and by whom.
  1. Click on the “times cited link” to find the list of papers that have cited Weakliem’s paper.
  1. Find the paper entitled “FROM CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS TO CULTURE, ACTION, AND SOCIAL-ORGANIZATION” Which journal published this article and in which year?
  1. Click on the “Class-consciousness and political change” link at the top of the screen to return to the display of the original paper by Weakliem and click on the “related records” link to find other papers which shared references with your original paper. These will be sorted by most shared references. What is the highest number of references shared?

Task 2:

  1. Choose the general search button from the top of the screen. (You can use the general search facility if you are starting a search from scratch and want to find references on a particular topic, or if you have an incomplete reference such as the one below).
  1. You are interested in the work of W. Hyde on Snowball Earth, but can’t remember the exact title of his article(s). Enter snowball earth in the topic search box and enter the author’s name in the format suggested. How many articles have you found?
  1. Find the article which was published in the journal Nature in 2000. Click on the title to view more details. How many times has it been cited by others?
  1. Click on Times cited to view the list of articles. You can download this list in a variety of ways and formats. Check the boxes next to a few of the articles on the first page. On the right-hand side of the screen you will see an Output records box. Choose the Selected records on page option and then choose Full records and cited refs from the drop-down menu. Click on Email and enter your email address to email the records to yourself.
  1. Return to the original article by clicking the title link at the top of the page. If this article were of particular interest to you, you could click on Create Citation Alert (towards the right of the screen). You would then receive an email every time a new article cites your article in its bibliography. If you wish to use this feature you need to register but this is very quick and only requires you to enter your name, email address and to choose a password.