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Systematic and Systematic-Style Reviews

Citation Searching

Citation searching (also known as citation chasing) is a valuable technique in systematic and systematic-style reviews. Unlike keyword searching, which matches terms in titles, abstracts, or full text, citation searching explores the scholarly connections between articles. This method can help uncover relevant studies that may not appear in traditional database searches. Citation searching is typically done once eligible studies have been identified. Tip: For review questions that are complex and difficult to develop search strategies for, citation searching should be seriously considered as a supplementary search (JBI Evidence Synthesis Manual, 4.2.6.2).

Citation searching can be divided into two types: 

1. Backwards citation searching

Also called snowballing, this method looks backward in time by reviewing the reference lists of key articles to identify earlier relevant studies. 

How to do it: 

  • Examine the reference lists of: 

    • Key articles 
    • Relevant systematic reviews
    • Included studies in your review 

  • Use databases that support reference list exploration:

Tip: Reference lists in systematic reviews often contain high-quality, screened studies, making them excellent sources for backwards searching. 

2. Forwards citation searching:

This method looks forward in time to identify newer studies that cite a particular article. It is more complex to perform manually and is best done using citation indexes.

Best practice:

  • Conduct forward citation searching on studies that meet your review's eligibility criteria
  • Use it as a supplementary method, especially when search terms are difficult to define.

Caution: Be mindful of citation bias. Some researchers may preferentially cite studies with positive results (see Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, v6.5, Technical suppl., p.8).

Where to search:

Citation searching can be performed in:

  • Citation indexes (e.g. Scopus, Web of Science)
  • Other sources that allow tracking of references and citations like Google Scholar.

Here’s a suitable **alt text** for your library guide: **Alt text:** *Infographic illustrating backward and forward searching in academic research. A central "perfect" article from 2020 is shown with arrows pointing left to older cited articles (2009, 2015, 2018) for backward searching, and arrows pointing right to newer citing articles (2021, 2023, 2024) for forward searching. Image has a CC BY licence.

Citation chaining

[Infographic]

Note. From What are citation chaining and citation mapping, by A. Zhao, 2025, Literature Discovery through Citation Chaining and Mapping (https://libguides.hkust.edu.hk/citation-chaining/). 2024 CC BY 4.0.

Citation overview in Scopus:

Google Scholar has links to "cited by" articles an the option to "search within articles" once you have searched for a known item.

 

Click on "Cited by", and select "Search within citing articles"

Citation Indexes

Citation indexes are types of databases that track citations and list references in addition to including standard bibliographic details. They are useful as they track and analyse literature in a way that is not easily undertaken manually, and may find articles not indexed in subject databases. The most commonly used citation indexes are:

Citation mapping

Citation mapping or Bibliometric mapping is a visual method used to explore and understand the relationships between academic publications based on how they cite each other. These tools can be valuable for identifying influential papers, emerging research trends, and key authors in a specific field or for a specific topic. By creating maps or networks of citations, researchers can see how ideas have developed over time, spot gaps in the literature, and even find potential collaborators. There are many tools available to generate citation maps including:

Tip: Monash Health Library has evaluated several citation mapping tools. The evaluation will be updated yearly and can be viewed here.

Citation maps like this one generated by Research Rabbit are useful for exploring research networks, identifying influential works, and discovering new literature in a field. In the example below, a key publication is uploaded and related citing authors are linked.

This image illustrates a citation map generated using Research Rabbit, a tool for visualizing scholarly connections. At the center of the map is the green node labeled "Glass 1991", representing a key publication. Surrounding it are multiple blue nodes, each corresponding to related works that have cited or been influenced by the central publication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glass, 1991 Citation Map

[Citation map]

Note. From Research Rabbit. (2025, August 8).https://www.researchrabbit.ai/

    
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