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Google Scholar and Citation Chaining

Google Scholar and Backward Citation Chaining

Backward citation chaining is when you mine the references list of an article to find additional articles. If you are doing research on Crossfit and find that this article is relevant to your research, you can go to the references list at the end to find other relevant articles.

Screenshot of article on injuries and crossfit

Screenshot of a highlighted citation from the reference list in the crossfit article

If the article by Summitt, Cotton, Kays, and Slaven sounds relevant, you can copy the article’s title from the citation and paste it into Google Scholar.

Screenshot of article from citation list from crossfit article, found in Google Scholar

Remember that some articles will be available as full text through Google Scholar, but others will ask you to pay if you are not connected to UNCG Libraries. This video shows the steps for connecting Google Scholar to UNCG.

Things to remember about backward citation chaining:

  • The articles in an article’s references list are almost always older than the original article, so remember to pay attention to the date, especially if your instructor has told you to find articles published in the past X number of years.
  • Never pay for an article while you’re at UNCG! Use the “Find Full Text @ UNCG option” or use the library chat to help you locate an article.

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