What is Quick Search?
Litmaps offers two kinds of search. The first is our basic "Quick Search" lookup feature, which you can use to find papers and select starting papers for your Litmap. The second is the actual search algorithms used to recommend articles in your Litmap.
How to search for articles in Quick Search
To search for articles, or select starting articles for a new Litmaps:
Click on the Search Bar at the top left of the app
Type in keywords on your topic, or a paper you know
Hit Enter
Look through the papers to find the one you're looking for.
How does Quick Search work?
Litmaps uses data from three different sources, including OpenAlex, Crossref, And Semantic Scholar. Read more about our database here.
Litmaps Quick Search uses the Google Scholar search engine* by default. If this doesn't find your queried paper, it will then use the Semantic Scholar search engine, followed by the Litmaps search engine.
You can also change which search algorithm to use in Quick Search by clicking on the Google Scholar symbol next to the Search button (see the image below).
*Note: The search engine is different than the search database! If you can't find a paper, click here.
Advanced Quick Search
We use Elasticsearch to power our keyword search engine.
We support several advanced search operators (operator = explanation):
" … " = Match exact phrases – Ideal for title searches
- = Exclude the next term
( … ) = Group terms
pre* = Matches all possibilities after the given prefix
| = Logical OR operator
+ = Logical AND operator