Citation mining is when you use a relevant book or article to find more resources on the same topic.
Everything published about a topic is part of the scholarly conversation. This scholarly conversation happens over many years as more resources continue to be published. These resources can fit into a timeline based on their publication date. You can move forwards and backwards on the scholarly communication timeline through citation mining.
You can use citation mining to move forward in time and find new resources that cite your current resource. You can use citation mining to go backward in time and find the old resources that your current resource cites.
When you use citation mining to move backwards in time, you are looking for resources that your current resource cites.
You can find older related resources in two different ways:
How to Mine for Citations:
Citation mining can help you find primary resources.
If you find an article or book about your target topic, look at what primary resources that author found and cited.