Suppose you have done a literature search and found a fantastic paper
from 2007. You can use the reference list in that original paper
to find older
papers, and you can do a citation search to find younger papers.
Remember that it probably took at least a year for that paper to get
published, so the work in it is really from 2006 and before. You'd
like to know if anyone since then has published a paper related to this
topic. Here's an easy way to find out.
Let's use this paper:
Thewissen, J.G.M; Cooper, L.N.; Clementz, M.T.; Bajpai, S.; &
Tiwari, B.N., 2007, Whales originated from aquatic artiodactyls in the
Eocene epoch of India, Nature 450(7173):1190-94.
Go to Google Scholar at scholar.google.com. If you have not
already set your library preferences, click on Settings, then click
Library Links in the navigation list on the left. Type
"Sacramento" into the search field, and click the magnifying
glass. Choose Sacramento State out of the list of institutions,
and click Save. You will be returned to the search page.
Put the title of the paper in the search field, and click the magnifying glass.
Our paper is the first one listed. Notice just under the citation
on the left, it says Cited by 113. Click on that link.
This is a list of papers that cited the original paper you were
interested in. Some of them will not be relevant to your search,
but some probably are. These are papers on your topic that are
more recent than the original paper you found.
Your assignment is to choose one of your references that is a little (or
a lot) out of date. Do a citation search as described above to
find newer papers on the same topic. Print out the first page of
your citation search and attach it to your outline and bibliography.