Why use citation databases?

Citation Indexes are a key research tool, providing access to multidisciplinary literature from high impact research journals.

Cited References identify the research that contributed to a work
Times Cited indicates the impact of a piece of research
find related papers
analyse the impact of a piece of research
identify key researchers and contacts in a discipline

You can also set up search and citation alerts and create custom journal lists.

Citation databases

High quality citation databases provide links between an article, articles it cited and articles which cited it. The three major citation databases are listed below. Some content overlaps, but you need to use multiple databases for optimal results.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
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The largest multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, books, journals, online tools, bibliographic databases and newsletters relevant to science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities. Provides tools to track, analyse and visualise research.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary collection of full text and citation index databases including scholarly journals, books, book series, reports and conferences. Provides Citation Indexes such as Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Chemical Indexes.
For effective searching use “quotation marks” around each search term, including single words.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Search tool for full text and citations of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories and universities.

Instructions: To get full-text articles, set your Google Scholar preferences.

Web of Science Tutorials

Web of Science online tutorials

Scopus tutorials

All official Scopus tutorials.

Elsevir B.V. SciVerse® is a registered trademark of Elsevier Properties S.A., Scopus® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V.

Publisher platforms with quality full text

ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Full text database provides access to journal articles and books covering multiple science disciplines.
CSIRO Publishing This link opens in a new window
Full text access to journals, books and magazines online and in print format related to research on animal and plant science, environmental, health, physical, life and marine science.

This selection of databases contain high quality journals and occasionally books, from a single publisher. Researchers can set up article or table of content alerts and be notified of new issues.

Emerald This link opens in a new window
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Strength: Management
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Strength: Arts and Social Sciences
LWW (Ovid) This link opens in a new window
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Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) provides print and electronic full text resources about health care including drug guides, medical journals, nursing journals, medical textbooks and eBooks.
Oxford University Press Journals This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary
SAGE Journals This link opens in a new window
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Strength: Social Science
Springer Nature Link This link opens in a new window
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Strength: Science
Taylor and Francis Online This link opens in a new window
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Strengths: Social Science and Education

Link creator tool

Copy and paste a DOI or a permanent link into the top text box. Select Submit.

A new link will appear in the bottom box. Copy the Output article link and paste it into Canvas or into a web browser search window to go directly to the article.

This link will open on or off-campus.

Resources For Researchers