Citation Chaining
Finding literature by following citations backward through a paper's reference list and forward through the works that later cite it.
Citation chaining is a search technique that uses one relevant paper to find others. Backward chaining follows the paper's reference list to the earlier work it built on; forward chaining uses citation indexes to find later work that cites it. Starting from a few well-chosen sources, chaining traces the scholarly conversation around a topic in both directions through time.
For a thesis, chaining catches what keyword searches miss, because authors do not always use your search terms even when studying your topic. Backward chains lead you to seminal works everyone in the field cites; forward chains from those works reveal the current state of the debate and recent studies close to your question. Record how you found each source, since a systematic review must report chaining as part of its search strategy.
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