Who this guide is for

This guide is for any student, staff member, or faculty member here at Oswego, but we think it will be most useful to upper level undergraduate students and graduate students.

The overall concept

In this guide, we'll describe how you can build on your research by starting with one good article or book chapter. In a nutshell:

  • You can look backward by looking at the article's bibliography. As you were reading the article, did any of its citations seem relevant to your research topic?
  • You can look forward by seeing who has cited your "one good article." Because academic publishing is a slow process, this is more useful when the "one good article" is at least a year or two old.

Here's a visual way of looking at it - in the example image below, the De Wever, Schellens, Valcke, & Van Keer article is our "one good article."

Image showing a timeline with three citations, each one cited by the previous one