Smart Researcher: How I Mapped My Citation Landscape
OpenAlex
Throughout my literature review, OpenAlex has been instrumental in helping me identify essential papers, books, and journals relevant to my research.
⮞ What is the main function or strength of this tool?
OpenAlex is a comprehensive, open-access scholarly database designed to facilitate structured research exploration. It provides detailed metadata on academic works, authors, institutions, journals, and topics. With its open-source model and rich API, it supports both individual research and large-scale bibliometric analysis, making it an excellent alternative to commercial databases like Scopus or Web of Science.
⮞ How user-friendly is the interface?
OpenAlex features a simple, accessible interface that supports effective scholarly exploration. Users can enter keywords to retrieve well-organized results, including titles, abstracts, author details, publication dates, sources, citation counts, and references. It also provides citation and reference data to contextualize a paper’s academic lineage. Additionally, the tool links to the full text when available and highlights open access resources. Its clean layout and organized structure make it an efficient platform for literature review.
⮞ What kind of outputs does it generate?
OpenAlex generates detailed, text-based outputs with comprehensive metadata. Each result includes:
Title, authors, and abstracts
Publication date and source journal
Citation and reference data
Subject classification and open access status
Links to full text, if available
Although it doesn’t offer visual graphs, its structured layout enables effective scholarly navigation and bibliometric analysis.
⮞ Did the tool help you discover any new or unexpected resources?
Absolutely. OpenAlex led me to foundational journals such as The Cartographic Journal and several Digital Humanities journals. These sources significantly enriched my research, offering new perspectives and anchoring my work in established scholarship within literary cartography and digital humanities.
⮞ What are its limitations?
OpenAlex, while robust, has a few limitations:
Lack of Visual Tools: It does not offer visualizations like citation graphs or thematic maps.
Dependent on External Sources: Full texts are not hosted; access depends on external platforms or open access availability.
Limited Filtering: The search interface has fewer advanced filtering options compared to specialized research databases.
No Personalization Features: It lacks options for saving searches, generating reading lists, or receiving recommendations.
Nonetheless, OpenAlex remains an invaluable, free resource for academic research and literature analysis.
LitMaps
⮞ What is the main function or strength of this tool?
LitMaps excels in visually organizing and tracking scholarly articles related to a specific keyword or research area. It automatically updates users with newly published papers relevant to their chosen topic, helping researchers stay current and identify thematic trends and scholarly connections.
⮞ How user-friendly is the interface?
The interface of LitMaps is highly intuitive and user-friendly. Users can easily search for academic articles using keywords or DOI numbers, and seamlessly generate visual citation maps. The tool supports the integration of multiple topics into a single map, allowing for the exploration of interconnections and thematic overlaps. Users can view references and citations for each article directly within the map, which aids in tracking the evolution of research. The platform also supports the discovery of recent publications, keeping researchers up-to-date with developments in their field.
⮞ What kind of outputs does it generate?
LitMaps produces interactive visual outputs that greatly enhance the literature review process:
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Citation Trails: Display how one paper is cited by others, helping to trace academic influence.
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Network Graphs: Show relationships between articles based on thematic and citation linkages.
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Metadata Summaries: Include titles, authors, abstracts, publication dates, and citation counts.
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Timeline View: Organizes papers chronologically, offering a temporal perspective of research evolution.
⮞ What keywords, DOI, or papers did you use to start your search?
I began with the foundational book Literary Mapping in the Digital Age, edited by David Cooper, which served as a springboard into the field of literary cartography.
⮞ Did the tool help you discover any new or unexpected resources?
Yes. Despite having already explored a significant portion of the literature, LitMaps revealed several new and unexpected articles relevant to my research on cartography. These works provided critical insights that aligned closely with my research objectives. Examples include:
⮞ What are its limitations?
LitMaps has a few notable limitations. The free version restricts users to only three maps. To create additional maps, users must delete existing ones or opt for a paid subscription. Additionally, the article import feature often fails to retrieve data, making it unreliable for incorporating external sources. The platform also doesn’t host full-text articles, providing access only if they are available through open access or external links.
Connected Papers
⮞ What is the main function or strength of this tool?
Connected Papers is designed to visualize the academic landscape around a specific research paper. By entering a title or DOI, it generates a graph based on citation relationships, showing both foundational and derivative works. This allows researchers to trace the development of ideas and discover influential papers they may not have otherwise encountered.
⮞ How user-friendly is the interface?
Connected Papers offers an exceptionally clean and easy-to-navigate interface. Its dual display modes—graph and list—cater to both visual and detailed analytical approaches. The graph view presents an interactive network of papers, color-coded by publication date (older papers in faded tones, newer in bold). The list view provides detailed information on each paper, including the title, authors, year of publication, citation count, and similarity to the original work. It also includes filters for access type (free PDFs, open access, code availability), and users can export the entire graph and list into Word format.
⮞ What kind of outputs does it generate?Connected Papers produces several valuable outputs:
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Visual Graphs: Show related works through thematic and citation-based links.
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Citation Trails: Implicitly represented through connections between prior and derivative works.
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List View: Includes detailed paper metadata and similarity scores.
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Color-coded Timeline: Aids in tracking research development over time.
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Exportable Data: Graphs and metadata can be downloaded for citation management.
⮞ What keywords, DOI, or papers did you use to start your search?
I started with Literary Mapping in the Digital Age, edited by David Cooper.
⮞ Did the tool help you discover any new or unexpected resources?
Yes, Connected Papers surfaced a range of related literature, expanding my awareness of the broader discourse in literary cartography.
⮞ What are its limitations?
While powerful, Connected Papers has its drawbacks. It does not provide access to full-text articles and draws heavily from Semantic Scholar, which may miss less-cited or niche journal articles—such as those from The Cartographic Journal. Additionally, it doesn’t show explicit citation chains (i.e., who cites whom directly), and lacks features for annotation or note-taking. Despite this, its graphical overview makes it an excellent tool for literature exploration.
Note: However, while exploring these web tools, it is often the case that full-text articles are not readily available on all platforms. In such instances, the complete resources can be accessed through databases like JSTOR, Taylor & Francis, and ONOS.
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Explore Citation Landscape of ' Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping'.png)
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