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Literature Discovery through Citation Chaining and Mapping: Litmaps

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

Litmaps - About

Litmaps

Litmaps helps you find papers based on one or a set of seed papers or a research topic by keywords. It suggests papers based on their Similarity ("top shared citations and references"), Common Authorship Patterns, or Similar Abstract & Title Content. Learn more about their algorithms

You can use Litmaps to:

  • View papers on a timeline (papers on the right are more recent).

You can also: 

  • Use “More like this” (or “Tag” papers) to add more papers to your map and quickly expand your search with more related papers.
  • Use “Monitor” (email alert) to stay updated on any new papers added to the database.
  • Export papers to BibTeX, RIS, CSV.

Litmaps - Quick Demo

Litmaps - Tutorials (official)

Getting Started 

What's covered

0:09 Find a starting article 
0:46 Explore your Litmap
1:59 Looking through and saving papers
2:24 Use "More Like This" to save papers and focus your search

How to Read the "Map"

  • Each node: one paper
  • Node size:
    • default: no. of references
    • can be customized to: no. of citations, fixed size, map relevance
  • Node color:
    • Dark grey: papers included in the Litmaps
    • White: paper recommendations (not yet included in the Litmaps)
       
  • Axis coordinates: 
    • default:
      x: publication date
      y: no. of citations
    • both x and y can be customized to: publication date, no. of citations, no. of references, map relevance
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