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Search Algorithms in Litmaps
Search Algorithms in Litmaps

Here's how Litmaps searches and recommends articles. Plus, how you can customize your search for best results.

Marina Kisley avatar
Written by Marina Kisley
Updated over a week ago

Litmaps provides comprehensive and customizable search algorithms, letting you efficiently search through the scientific literature on your topic.

Litmaps Search Filters

Use customizable search filters to drill down on the right papers faster.

Use the Litmaps date filter to:

Use the Litmaps keyword filter to:

Litmaps Search Algorithms

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 left of the Map.

Read more about our algorithm options below.

Top Shared Citations & References

Litmaps finds results with the most connected literature to your input article(s).

For a single input article, Litmaps returns the most inter-connected articles from among your paper's citations, references and co-citations (co-citations are all the citations of the references). For multiple inputs, Litmaps returns the most inter-connected articles from among all the inputted papers citations and references.

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

Common Authorship Patterns

Litmaps analyzes your inputs and identifies the most common author collaborations and returns other articles also published by those author collaborations.

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

Similar Abstract & Title Content

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.

How to use Litmaps Search Algorithms

Here's how to create a search in Litmaps, as well as adjust the algorithms.

Keep in mind that some features, like date filtering, are only available in Litmaps Pro.

  1. Go to the Litmaps app

  2. Click at the top left of the app

  3. Lookup an article you know, or type in keywords for your topic (e.g. "carbon sequestration forest review").

  4. Select one or more starting article(s) and click "Explore Related Articles"

  5. Click on "Top Shared Citations & References" at the top left of the Map to change the algorithm. You can also:

    1. Add keywords

    2. Set a date filter

  6. Click to re-run the search with your changes.

To dive deeper into a topic, you can continuously expand the search by adding more articles to your Map. To do so:

  1. Go through the recommended articles. For articles you like:

    1. Clickto add it to the Litmap

    2. Tag it, if you'd like to categorize and save it, by clicking

  2. Click at the top of the list of articles. Now, the articles you added to the Map will also be used to find more literature.

You can also ignore articles you don't want to see anymore in the search. Click to ignore an article.

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