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EGIS (Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society): Using what you know to find literature

Using what you know to find other useful sources

Let’s assume you have done a search and have found (or have been given on a reading list) a really useful article. How can you use this article to find other good articles? There are various different ways:

  • Keywords/controlled vocabulary
    If you are struggling to think of appropriate keywords to broaden/narrow your search, look at those used in a useful paper. A&I Databases will have better/more keywords than a publisher database.
  • Author Details/links
    Is this author an expert in the field, might they have other useful papers? Search for author name in the A&I database/s, or search for their papers in their personal/institutional website.
  • Recommended articles / ‘Other users also viewed’
    Articles which share some of the same references
  • Journal Details
    Is this quite a specialised journal, might it publish papers on the same topic? Search within that journal with your selected keywords/ set up table of contents alerts to be notified of new articles.
  • Cited reference searching (see below)

For further help with this, or with any aspect of Literature Searching, please contact your:

Cited Reference Searching

It is possible to search in the following resources for a specific article title and then see who has subsequently cited that paper:

  • WoS = Times Cited
  • Scopus = Cited By

This is necessarily looking forward i.e. how has this area of research developed/who has subsequently cited this paper in their research.