Guides & Bibliographies

Author's Citation Search in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)

Introduction

Academic authors are often interested in finding out who is reading and citing their work. Listed below are some suggested steps to do a "cited reference search" in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). This will provide a partial answer to the question of how often, and by whom, a particular author's work is cited. The Social Sciences Citation Index is a multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the social sciences. It fully indexes more than 1,725 journals across 50 social sciences disciplines. Some of the disciplines covered include: Anthropology, History, Law, Political Science, Psychiatry, Psychology, Social Issues, Social Work, Sociology, Substance Abuse, Urban Studies, and Women's Studies. The SSCI provides access to current information and retrospective data from 1975 forward.

The Social Sciences Citation Index is available to current UT Arlington faculty & students via the Web of Knowledge and the Web of Science database collections owned by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) and the Thomson Corporation at this webaddress:

eresource.uta.edu/cgi-bin/db-wok.cgi

Searching

A truncation symbol in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is an asterisk (*), and here are the steps to do a "cited reference search" in the Social Science Citation Index. The "cited reference search" or the cited author search is a commonly requested type of search.

1. Click on the Web of Knowledge link given above.

2. From the first screen choose the Web of Science and click on the "GO" button.

3. From the next screen choose the Social Sciences Citation Index by UN-clicking both the Science Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

4. Once you have only the Social Sciences Citation Index checked, then click on the button marked "Cited Ref Search." This will take you to the "Cited Ref Search" webpage.

5. On the "Cited Ref Search" screen look carefully at the example. Here is how an author named Jill Dubisch might search for work that cites her work. She would enter her name as: "dubisch j*." Note, that this can be in either caps or lowercase letters. Note that the last name is first and that there is an asterisk (*) after the first letter of the first name. Then click on the "search" button.

6. This "dubisch j*" search will bring up some of her published works and some works published by other people named Dubisch with a first initial "J". The author named Jill Dubisch would then look through the long list that is presented, and she would put a check next to the articles she recognizes as her own.

7. Once she has checked all of the items that are hers, then she clicks on the button marked "Finish Search."

8. This last part of the search will then give Jill Dubisch a list of works that cite one or more of her works. Note, that this type of "Cited Ref Search" works well with unusual last names; authors with common last names, such as Smith or Jones, may find this type of search to be quite difficult.

9. For more common names, such as Smith or Jones, more information is needed, and some hands-on training may be required. Contact me, John Dillard [dillard@uta.edu] and I might be able to assist you.

The steps above are designed to aid researchers with a specific type of common research question. The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the companion databases, the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) have a number of other research uses. Contact me if you need any more assistance; my contact information is given below.

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Last Modified: 2006 May 9
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