Citation databases

Citation databases go beyond simple searching. They don’t just help you find research, they give you tools to explore connections, track influence, and evaluate the impact of scholarship. They can be especially useful when you want to understand the bigger picture around a topic, author or journal.

Use a citation database to:

Find and identify research

  • Tell the difference between authors with the same name
  • Find the most cited or most relevant works on a topic
  • Discover related works that share authors or references

Analyse and track trends

  • Break down search results by year, author, journal, or subject
  • Compare the performance of journals in a subject area
  • View an author or institution’s publishing profile, including h-index

Stay up to date

  • Set up alerts for new research by an author or on a topic
  • Get notified when a work is cited by others

Access citation databases

The library subscribes to Web of Science and Scopus for reliable, curated citation searching. You may also see citation counts in tools like Google Scholar.

Citation counts will vary across platforms as they cover different sources and merge duplicates in their own way.

Search Web of Science and Scopus from the A-Z Databases.

Tip: Use Find it @ CSU to link directly from these databases to full-text content in the Library’s online collection.

Help and how-to resources

Find help materials and support for using citation databases: