Litmaps has three search algorithms you can choose from.

After starting a search, you can update the search algorithm by clicking on "Top Shared Citations & References" at the top of the Map.

Read more about our algorithm options below.

Litmaps finds results with the highest amount of co-citations to your inputs. That is, articles which share common references and/or citations to your inputs.

→ Use Top Shared Citations & References to find all relevant articles on your work, and to find articles you may overlook using traditional keyword search.

Litmaps analyzes your inputs and identifies common author collaborations, based on citations. It will then recommend articles that feature similar groups of authors.

→ Use Common Authorship Patterns to understand the key authors and collaborations in your field and find their other work.

Litmaps uses AI-driven semantic analysis on the titles and abstracts of your inputs to find articles with similar content. This is the only algorithm that does not use citations/references in calculating recommendations.

→ Use Similar Abstract & Title Content to find papers that may have fewer citations or are from places you wouldn't normally check.

Our search tech isn't as strong as other databases like Google Scholar. If you're looking to browse literature based on topic, we recommend searching using your other databases and bringing those articles into Litmaps for further discovery.

The fastest and most reliable methods for bringing a known article into Litmaps are:

We use Elasticsearch to power our keyword search engine. We support several advanced search operators:

" … " Match exact phrases – Ideal for title searches

- Exclude the next term

( … ) Group terms

pre* Matches all possibilities after the given prefix

| Logical OR operator