Using the Social Sciences Citation Index

The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a multidisciplinary database indexing 1,700 journals and may be used as a standard journal index to locate journal articles. It is most useful, however, as a tool to identify articles that have referenced a given work, either in footnotes or bibliographies. For instance, if you learn of an important but old source on your research topic, you can use the SSCI to identify more recent articles that have cited that source and might discuss your topic further. Or, if you want to track how an important, seminal or controversial work has been treated in subsequent literature, you can use the index to identify articles citing that work. Note: in the SSCI, the cited source – what you have in hand – may be either a book or article, but the citing source – what you are looking for – will be articles only.

1. Click here to open a new window to SSCI.

 
2. Be sure "Social Sciences Citation Index" is checked in the "Select database(s) and timespan" section in the lower window. You can specify the years to search, but since a source may be cited for many years after being published, "all years" is the best selection. Then click on the "Cited Ref Search" button in the upper window.

 
3. On the "Cited Reference Search" screen, fill in one or more of the blanks:

1. CITED AUTHOR. Enter the name of the author of the given work. The name must be in the format, LASTNAME FM, as in SEGAL SP, for Steven P. Segal. You would do best to use the wildcard character and search the name using this format: SEGAL S*. That will find records citing SEGAL S with or without the middle initial. If you know last name only, search it like SEGAL*. You could also search using "OR": SEGAL S OR SEGAL SP.

 
2. CITED WORK. This is not the title of the article that has been cited. It is the title of the journal the cited article appears in. Journal titles in SSCI are abbreviated, and you should click on "view the Thomson ISI list of journal abbreviations" to find the correct abbreviation. To search books, it is preferable to leave this field blank and fill in "Cited author" only or both "Cited author" and "Cited year." If you fill in this blank, enter the first significant word or words of the title, and you should truncate because of variant spellings. Always truncate the last word. For instance, enter LISTEN* PROZAC* to look up references to the book Listening to Prozac.

 
3. CITED YEAR. This is the year of publication of the cited book or article. For multiple years, use "OR" in this format: 1995 OR 1996 OR 1997.


You can find more information about these search options by clicking the small i symbol. The more blanks you fill in, the more precise your search will be. After you have entered the search terms, click on "Search."

4. The lookup results will be a list that matches the terms you provided in step 3. This is not the citation search yet. Because there may be many articles by "SEGAL SP," you must select which one you are searching.  Scan the lookup results. You may need to look at the volume number, page number, or year to identify exactly the cited work you want to search. Blue entries mean more information for that work is available in the index; click on "View Record" to see it. When you find the entry you are searching for, put a check in the box next to it. Be aware that there may be multiple entries for the work you are searching. You can narrow the search by selecting language or format in the small windows at the bottom of the screen. After selecting the entries, click on "Finish Search."

 
5. The search results will display in a summary screen. The summary screen will have brief information for articles that cite the book or article you are tracking. Each entry in the results will have the title, author, journal, volume and date of the citing article. If the entry is underlined and in blue, you can click it to get fuller information about the article.
Note: SSCI does not have full text of articles. It includes citations and abstracts only.
 
6. In the full display, below the title of each record will be a note for the number of "Cited references"; clicking this will take you to the bibliography or reference list of works that the article cites. Included in this list will be the book or article you are tracking. Each record will also have a number for "Times Cited." This will tell you how many times the citing article has itself been cited by other articles. Clicking this number will take you to entries for those other articles.
To locate the journal on campus, or to see whether an online version exists, click the orange "UC-eLinks" button.
 
7. Printing, downloading, or emailing your results:
1. Mark the records you want first. Return to the search results summary screen and put a check next to all the records you are interested in.
 
2. Save the records you have marked by clicking on "Submit." This will add the records to a list of entries you want to save. You can mark and submit from several different searches, and then display the complete marked list when you’re done with all your searches.
 
3. Click the "Marked List" button at the top of the screen to see the records you have saved.
 
4. Scroll down the screen to view the saved records. From this screen you can select options for printing, emailing, or saving to disk. You can also save results in a format that you can export to commercial citation management software.