Citing references are used to chain "forward" to newer articles that include the article you have found in their references (in this photo 41). These articles should be more recent than the original article and can be relevant to your research question or topic. Citing references can help you move forward in the research process to help anticipate research is headed.

Citing references can also indicate if an article relevant to a field of study or controversial. If an article has many citing references--especially if it's a recent article--many researchers are reading it, referencing it, and talking about it. In addition to being useful in discovering the impact of this article in a field of study, citing references can also reveal if the article is of high-quality or low-quality science. Review some of the citing references to determine which is the case.

You can find citing references in Web of Science and Google Scholar.

To receive most search alerts and access other advanced functions in a database, you'll need to create a free personal account. It's often a good idea to create a free personal account for databases you use most often so that you can take advantage of extra features, like alerts, saving citations, and more.

Look in the upper right corner of most databases to create a personal account.

In EBSCO Databases:

In Medline:

In ProQuest Databases:

In Web of Science:

Most databases will allow you to create alerts based your searches. You can get updated results through an email or an RSS feed.

Look near the top of your result lists for links to create search alerts:

Most online journals allow you to subscribe to their latest articles and/or table of contents through an RSS feed or email. Below are links to alert feeds for a number of journal providers in the sciences.