Discover Science Faster

Visual research navigation, citation network search, and team synchronization.

 The ultimate science discovery platform.

Dive In

Start creating literature maps.

Quick Start

Experience what Litmaps can do.

Try one of these live example maps:
Overview

Visualise your key literature.

See how your research topic fits together.

Features

Here are the highlights.

Dynamic Literature Map
The Literature Map or "Litmap" for short, lets you see citations between articles over time, and click through them visually.
As it's dynamic you can adjust the map to your needs. Size nodes by citation count, set a finer time scale, or only show edges on hover.
Powerful Search
Using the right search tools for the different discovery tasks you need to perform is challenging. We provide keyword search alongside citation-based network search in one place.
Relevant Recommendations
Litmaps automatically recommends highly connected articles to your maps, to help you discover what you may have missed. In addition our robots can email you periodic recommendations, to help you stay informed of new articles that are relevant to your maps.
Dynamic Literature Map

Visualise the Citation Network.

Build your literature map
When you create a map containing the key articles in your search area, our visualisation helps to make sense of how they fit together. Over time the map contains what you have read, or need to read, and shows how new articles connect to your map. This process helps to take the model of how these articles fit together out of your head.

Our visualisation helps as it shows how your articles cite each other over time. This is a great way to see how articles develop over time. We also show an article's citations on hover, and it's dynamic so you can change the labels to show a title snippet, size nodes by citation count, or choose a finer time scale.
Create Multiple Maps
Keep your research topics seperate and neatly organised. Combine maps to see the intersection and interactions between different topics.
Making maps is as easy as 1,2,3
Build from a seed article. Create a map from a “seed article” to quickly find the most connected articles around that article. This is a great starting point to build from.

From your Reference Library. Import your existing library from Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley and more.

From an Authors' Work. Use an authors' name, ORCID iD, or affiliation to find their articles to add to your map.
Share Maps with Others
Create a Link To Your Map. Share this link with colleagues, friends, or the public to help communicate your research work.

Embed Your Map (Beta). Put your map on a website or blog, to let others interact with your research.
Powerful Search

Great ways to find.

Keyword Search
Search by keywords, and date, then see how your search results connect to your maps.
Explore
Find articles that are closely connected to your maps.
Automate Searches
Explore crawls the citation network starting from the articles in your map.
After inspecting thousands of articles, Explore results are ranked by the quantity and strength of connection to your map.
Fine Tune
In addition to adding relevant articles to your map, you can hide results you don't want to see. Hiding an article also tells Explore to actively avoid these articles when traversing the citation tree.
Iterate toward your goal
You can re-run Explore to iterate toward what you are looking for. Over time Explore will improve based what you've put in.
Relevant Recommendations

Low Effort. High Reward.

Suggestions
Litmaps automatically suggests articles that are highly connected to map. Suggestions also update when you add new articles to your map or remove others. This is a great way to find articles you may have missed.
Map Updates
Turn on periodic updates that show the top 5 Explore results that connect to your maps. These can optionally be emailed to your inbox.

All the details.

Individual

  • 2 Workspaces
  • 2 Collaborators per Workspace
  • 50 Maps per Workspace
$0
Get Started

Team

  • Custom Workspaces
  • Custom Collaborators per Workspace
  • Custom Maps per Workspace
Contact Us
Get In Touch

Hear what our users are saying.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does your data come from?
We use Microsoft Academic Graph combined with Semantic Scholar going forward. Please let us know via email (team@litmaps.co) if you find errors in our dataset. We'd also like to hear what other datasets you might be interested in us adding.
What is a Map?
This is a set of articles that you build up related to your area of study or work. These are presented as a graph where articles are circles (nodes) and references are lines (edges). By default these are ordered over time by their publication date.
How does your Keyword Search work?
We do plain keyword search, using a standard web technology called Elasticsearch which uses this methodology for ordering results. We then rerank the results with a reranker based on Semantic Scholar's reranker.
How does Explore work?
  • We do a 2º citation network search from your maps. This means we search through the citation network to find the articles connected to your maps by references and citations. These are the 1º citation search results. We then go one step further and find all the articles connected to those 1º articles.
  • For keyword searches you add to Explore, we run a Quick Search and then use these results to search through the citation network, using the same process as a map (described in the previous bullet point).
  • We then use all of those connections to your maps and/or keywords, give a list of the top 30 most connected articles.
  • One nice feature of this approach is that it can find research that is closely related to your map but is not found by keyword search (for example because people use different names for the same thing).
How do Map Updates work?
  • We run Explore on your map against new articles published, to notify you of new articles related to your map.
Can I use Litmaps now?
  • Yes! There is a free version available at: https://app.litmaps.co
Can I use a Litmaps Map in a research publication?
  • Yes! We are supportive and encourage academic publishing of a map for your article. If you need further information please send us an email (team@litmaps.co)
  • If you'd like to cite us please use: Litmaps [Computer software]. (2021). Retrieved from https://app.litmaps.co
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