It is often useful to go through the endnotes or references of a paper to find sources the author has cited for information you might be able to use, which is a “backwards citation search."  Many times the citations at the end of a paper will be linked so you can easily find them.  If they are not, you can look up the journal title in the Library Catalog to find out if the library has access to the journal.  Be sure to use the drop-down menu and select "Journal Title" for your search.  Then you will need to look up the article by title in that journal.

A "forward" citation search can also be useful since academia is full of ongoing conversations between scholars.  A “forward citation search” means finding other papers which cite a particular paper.  One way to do a forward citation search is to enter a paper title and author into Google Scholar and look for the "Cited by" link under the brief paper abstract.  You can also use the database Web of Science to find if a paper has been cited.