Show HN: Litmaps – Visualize and search citation networks to speed up lit review

Hi I'm one of the founders of Litmaps. We set out to build this tool after frustration with the state of current academic search software. This was specifically from the painful literature review process of my co-founder during his PhD.

Our first attempt to solve this was with a "map of all science" (1400-today, 100M+ articles, 1B connections), which we did build but it didn't end up solving the problem that well.

We re-approached this problem by pairing a time-based citation network visualization, with helpful search tools, and project state. Our visualization lets you quickly see how search results relate to each other (optionally with nodes sized by citation count). We currently provide keyword search (with results optionally ranked by connection to your project graph, to target searches), and a network search that scans for highly connected articles up to two degrees away from your project. Lastly the project state is nice because as you build up key articles, network search is more targeted and we can send you updates if there are any newly published works that connect to your project as we update our dataset.

It's currently in early access so it's free to use, and you don't need to create an account to get started. You can dive right in and start finding relevant papers to what you are working on or are interested in.

Interested in hearing feedback on our work so far. Thanks.