Whether you're diving into a new research topic or expanding upon an existing research library, you can use Litmaps to quickly find the most relevant papers on your topic.
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How to search for articles with Litmaps
Click the search bar at the top left of the Litmaps app
Search for your research topic, or a paper you know
Select the article(s) relevant to your topic. These are your starting articles.
Click "Explore Related Articles"
That's it! You've created your first Litmap on your research.
Your starting articles are dark dots, connected to suggested articles which are hollow dots. You can see all the suggested articles are listed on the side too.
Find more papers using "More Like This"
You can find relevant articles on your topic, get comprehensive coverage, and stay organized by saving articles to your Litmap.
When reviewing suggested articles in Litmaps, click "More Like This" to save an article to your Litmap. You can then re-run the search to discover even more relevant literature, using these new, added papers as additional inputs to the search algorithm.
Advanced search with Litmaps
Litmaps is unique compared to other research tools when it comes to focusing your literature search using advanced functionality. You can use special filters to narrow your search. You can also switch the search algorithm to find different kinds of research for your work.
Use Litmaps Search Filters
Use customizable search filters to drill down on the right papers faster. Filter by:
Publication Date
Keywords
Author
Journal Title
Journal H-Index
Journal SJR Quartile
Publication Date Filter
Limit results to those published in this date range. Use the date filter to find new versions of older papers or to review historical work.
Keyword Filter
Limit results to those with these keywords in their title or abstract. Use the keyword filter to find the right papers faster or potential research gaps.
Tip: Want to use "or" or "and" operators here? Click here to read how.
Journal (Name) Filter
Limit results to those published by these journals.
Journal H-Index Filter
Limit results to those published in journals within this h-index range, based on data from OpenAlex. H-index reflects the prestige and impact of journals.
Journal SJR Quartiles Filter
Limit results to those published in journals with these SJR quartiles.
The Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) is a measure of the prestige of journal, that also considers the weight of citations based on what journals they are from. The Q1 quartile is occupied by the top 25% of journals in the list, Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group, and so on. A citation from a high SJR journal has more value than a lower SJR journal.
Author Filter
Limit results to those published by these authors.
Advanced filters are available only in Litmaps Pro.
Change the search algorithm
Litmaps lets you change the search algorithm; read about our algorithms here.
To change the search algorithm in Litmaps:
Go to your Litmap
Click on the algorithm icon
Select another algorithm
Search using your library
What makes Litmaps unique is that you can search on your entire research library.
Import articles from you reference manager into Litmaps to search on them. You can sync directly with Zotero, or import using a BibTeX, RIS or PubMed.
Click Import at the top left
Import a file of your existing literature
Click "Explore Related Articles"
Your resulting Litmap finds relevant literature, based on your existing library.
Ignore certain articles
To better customize your results, you can also ignore recommendations you don't find useful. Below each recommendation, next to the "More like this" option, you can hit the Ignore icon.
