Web of Science has an advantage to finding cited references for a paper over Scopus or Google Scholar. Instead of simply finding an article in the database and clicking on a list of papers citing it (though this is still possible, it is not the recommended way to capture all citations to a paper due to typos or variations in citation metadata) you can choose to execute a "cited reference search" which will allow you to find all instances of references to a paper found within the WoS index - meaning you can manually choose to add papers that might have had a typo or incomplete reference to your search results. Other citation indexes do not have this option, making Web of Science potentially better for finding older or poorly indexed results - as long as the citing sources you want to include are included in its index, anyway.
Both Google Scholar or Scopus do not have the ability to do this type of manual variant searching and adding. Users are still able to view the citations to an article (in Google Scholar, this is the "Cited by" number located below the article title in a search result page, and in Scopus the "Cited by" number (and list of citing articles) is found by clicking into the page for the article itself).
If you are really serious about finding every single citation to a work, we recommend performing searches in multiple indexes to ensure you capture as much data as possible - though if you have a large number of citations, this can be a pain to do in Google Scholar, since there is no mass-export feature.
While you can use Web of Science in the same way we detail citation searching in Google Scholar and Scopus, by finding an article and clicking on a "cited by" link to see a list of citing articles, there is a slightly more inclusive option that finds variants or citations which may have been entered in incompletely or incorrectly. If you have an incomplete or obscure reference you are trying to track down, this method is also a great way to search for it using the information you do have. Below is a sample search showing how to do this:
In this example we want to find papers that have cited a 1985 paper written by Alan Wolf et al., that appeared in the Physica D journal, volume 16, pages 285-317.
1. Connect to Web of Science.
2. In the Advanced Search option, choose "Cited Reference Search" from the search type menu.
3. To focus your search in the citation index best suited to your topic, open the Editions section of the menu and select the database segments that are relevant to the topic: in this example, we'll choose the Science Citation Index Expanded, Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science, and Book Citation Index - Science.
4. Fill out the search form box:
5. You will see an index list of cited articles. Note the rigid format of the entries, which causes them to sort first by author, then by journal abbreviation and then by date:
Scan the list carefully for typos and variant postings. You'll need to note the page numbers and volume number of the entry to verify it's the exact paper you're looking for. "Cited Work" titles are always abbreviated, sometimes not very consistently. Page numbers and volume numbers can be inaccurate, transposed, or missing altogether.
The number of Citing Articles listed for each entry in this table is the total number of articles in the entire WOS database that cited that particular entry (so if you are limiting search results to only the core collection, such as in this example, the number of retrieved citations will likely decrease slightly).
6. Select all desired index entries, set any language or document-type limits at the bottom of the page, and then click See Results or Export.
7. A list of Citing Papers is retrieved. In this example, 7,589 papers are found in the WoS Core Collection Index once all variants of the correct citation were selected (not pictured, but as another example of potential variants to look for, many had a typo of the name of the article being entered in as the cited work - which should be the journal title, Physica D). This list can be re-sorted, exported, and analyzed in various ways. Links out to full text (depending on availability) are available too.
Some options for analysis within Web of Science include the analyze results button (which will bring you to a page where you can visualize basic data around what area of research the citations were published in), as well as an option to generate a citation report or (which will show citation metrics and a plot showing the times cited and publications over time for the article), and the option to create alert which will notify you of additional citations as they are indexed.
8. Click on a paper's title to view the full database record. From here, you can also look at the citing paper's reference list, or find Related Records citing the same things. The Times Cited figure is a sum of citing papers found in the database. (This number may undercount actual citations due to variant postings, so use it with caution.) Click on Times Cited to pull up a list of the citing papers.
Scopus, while it does not allow for the same type of variant-inclusive search Web of Science does, still does allow for a simple citation search. Simply locate the desired article, and select either the "citations" linked in the search results page, or click into the article and choose to see a list of citations to the article within that page.
Example Screenshots:
From search results page:
From a selected citation's page:
Interestingly, with our chosen example, Scopus actually captures more citations than Web of Science, even though WoS allows for variant additions!
Like with Web of Science, you can choose to export and download the resulting list of citation metadata, as well as analyze results within Scopus, which will provide similar (though not identical) metrics and publishing demographic information. There is also the option to view preprints (currently in beta testing) which cite the work.
In Google Scholar, finding citing papers works almost identically to Scopus, where after finding an article you can choose to view all citing references by clicking on the "cited by" number located at the bottom of the individual search result. k
Unsurprisingly due to its more inclusive nature, Google Scholar captures the most citations of any of the three indexes. However, it is not possible to mass export citations, instead requiring manual copying. There is also no built-in analysis outside of a visualization of citations by year. One final note is that the total number of citations it finds in web of science (bottom right of screenshot above) is potentially incorrect.
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