As you're thinking over your topic and developing your inquiry, discuss with your advisor(s) and professors what authors are specialists in this field and what books and/or articles have shaped the current conversations that your inquiry intersects with.  You may also recall readings in this area from past coursework that you want to return to and freshly consider.  When looking over articles and books for this purpose, make sure you look through the works cited.  You may also want to look these articles/books/authors up in the database Web of Science (see below) to find out if there are recent articles citing these sources that you would like to read and consider including as sources in your current project.

Web of Science (it's not just for Science!) is a database that allows you to search the titles and abstracts of articles in key journals in all disciplines. It also allows you to identify conversations by identifying seminal articles and books and finding recent articles that cite those sources.

• You can quickly look through several year's worth of issues of one or more journals with a single search.
• It's interdisciplinary and includes most of the important peer reviewed journals across all fields of knowledge.
• Records include the bibliography of the article, along with a count of the number of times each reference has been cited (based on the aggregate data in the Web of Science database).  Because of this citation tracking, it can be especially helpful in identifying high impact, seminal articles and books in a field.  It can also help you find interrelated articles.
• In many cases, direct links to cited references are provided.
• Like most of the library's databases,   links to access options for articles you're interested in (online, in print, or interlibrary loan).

1.  When you look at a full record  in WoS, and several other databases, you'll see a link to the references used by the author(s) in the writing of the article:

2.  Click on the number to view the bibliography.  

3.  Note that some of the references include a count of the number of times that source was cited by other authors. Based on the WoS database's records, it's not an absolute and complete count, but it's a useful metric for identifying seminal articles and books.

4.  Some things to consider when using "Times Cited" to identify a seminal publication:

• What's the publication date?  Sources published a long time ago have had many years to come to the attention of researchers in the field; recently published items haven't had much time to get noticed.  If a recently published item has been cited many times, it's an indication that it has had early influence.  
• If the cited title is an article, what journal is it from?  is it one of the journals recommended by your professor?  If not, is the journal a reputable one in the field of education?   
• Did the author cite several works by the same person?  This could indicate an expert in the field.
• Does the author cite himself/herself extensively?  If this is a pattern it could artificially inflate the "impact" of the article (as measured by "Times Cited").  

You can search within a particular journal or group of journals when you're in WoS. Keep in mind that you're searching only the titles and abstracts of articles, rather than the full text of articles.

1.  Access the Web of Science database

2.  Change the value in the first pulldown menu to PUBLICATION NAME and enter the title of the journal you want to search

3.  If searching more than one journal at a time, change the AND to OR

4.  Repeat step 2 for each journal you want to search

5.  Hit the SEARCH button

6.  The results screen will display citations in reverse chronological order.

7.  Type your topic in the  box to find articles that  are relevant to your project.  

8.  Used the Save to Marked List  feature to email citations to yourself, or export them to a citation management software such as Refworks, Zotero, or Mendeley.