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Literature Discovery through Citation Chaining and Mapping: Connected Papers

A quick guide to introduce citation chaining and mapping tools for literature discovery

Connected Papers

Connected Papers helps you find papers based on one seed paper or a research topic by keywords. It suggests papers based on their similarity to the origin paper, not direct citation relationship. This approach is especially helpful for looking up or identifying newer papers that have not yet received many citations.

You can use Connected Papers to: 

  • Find "Prior works" - papers that were most commonly cited by the papers in the graph (older studies)
  • Find "Derivative works" - papers that cited many of the papers in the graph (newer studies)

You can also: 

  • Add more seed papers through “add origin” to the pool to expand the search. However, each new paper added will also generate a new map
  • Use filters to refine (by keywords, PDF or code availability, Open Access status)
  • Export papers to BibTeX

Connected Papers - Quick Demo

Sample record on Connected Papers: ChatCounselor: A Large Language Models for Mental Health Support (as of 16 May 2024)

Note: Free account can create 5 graphs per month. All features included. Learn more about their pricing

How to Read the "Map"


Papers are arranged according to their similarity, not direct citations. Similar papers have strong connecting lines and cluster together. 

  • Each node: one paper
  • Node size: no. of citations
  • Node color shade: publication year (the darker, the more recent)
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