Citation chaining procedure
Last updated
Last updated
In citation chaining, one journal article links you to another, which links you to another, and so on to create a chain of relevant literature.
This is a useful research tactic when we are working on a literature review since it helps us follow chains of related sources.
For example, let's say we've found a relevant annual review article on our topic. We can make a chain of citations leading from that one article both forwards and backwards from the year of publication.
Let’s say we’re reading Miles Hewstone’s annual review article, .
On page 585, we read the following:
This argument is related to our first independent variable.
Now, we’re interested in this argument/evidence which is made by four different authors. We want to read only one or all of them too.
For this guideline, we will choose the highlighted one. We go to the references (literature cited or bibliography) section (at the very end of the article) and find the title of this study.
We need to make sure it’s a peer-reviewed journal article:
Before we find Duckitt’s article, we continue reading the annual review article by Hewstone to find more relevant arguments.
On page 586, we read the following:
We can benefit from this argument for our second independent variable.
That argument belongs to three authors and is relevant to our study too, that’s why we go to the references and find the title as well. We’ll go with Quillian.
Before we find Quillian’s article, we continue reading the annual review article by Hewstone to find one more relevant argument.
On page 593, we read the following:
Thanks to this argument, we have decided to change our third independent variable.
This argument belongs to two authors. We go to the references and find it as well. We’ll go with Ensari & Miller, because the other one is a book chapter. We should only look for peer-reviewed journal articles.
Our current citation chain looks like this:
If we like, we can continue the citation chaining by reading Hewstone, Duckitt, Quillian, and Ensari & Miller, and add more chains.
We will find the full PDF versions of these three articles.
If we see [PDF] on the right side, we have access. We click on [PDF], not the title.
We have found the PDF!
We have found the PDF!
NO PDF!
If you do not have access to the articles…
Email me (ttezcan@csumb.edu) with the title and the link of the articles.
It's always better to search DOI instead of title of the articles.
This is how we can find DOI:
Paste the "First Author" name and the "Article Title"
Click Search
The DOI appears at the bottom
We will paste the DOI (the most preferred way) or title of the articles into .
We can also use
