How can I find the most cited articles on a given topic?
Answer
Go to the library’s Web of Science database. This database holds over a billion citations, and also has a search feature where you can sort by how many times an article is cited.
To access this database, perform the following:
· Navigate to the Leatherby Libraries homepage
· Find the Search Database A-Z List section of the site (middle bottom)
· Click on the "A-Z List" link
· This takes you to an alphabetized list of all the library’s subscription databases.
· Choose W for Web of Science
· Find the Web of Science database from the list, and click Connect
· At this point, you will probably be asked to enter your Chapman username and password.
Once you are in the Web of Science database, you can start keyword searching. Type the keyword in for the area you are looking for. If you get hundreds of thousands of results, you might consider refining the search.
Once you have gotten the results you are happy with from a keyword search, you can sort results from the drop down menu Sort By: located at the top of your results. Sort by Times Cited – highest to lowest. This will show you the articles that have been cited the most.
Now, there are a few things to consider, Web of Science only provides this option for articles that are in its databases. There may be other articles which have been published in your area of interest which are not in Web of Science. Articles that have been published longer ago will have more opportunity to have been cited. Also, articles are typically cited the most 1-3 years after their initial publication. That being said, you might want to limit to a date range, say the last 5 or 10 years, to see what are the most cited articles currently.
The process for finding the most cited articles is available in the Web of Science for the areas of the arts & humanities, social sciences and sciences.