Litmaps

Litmaps

Freemium

Visual citation mapping tool for literature discovery that builds interactive, auto-updating paper maps from seed articles with 270M+ academic papers.

AI ResearchAI ResearchAI ProductivityStudentDeveloper
Visit Website ↗

What is Litmaps?

Litmaps is a literature discovery platform trusted by over 300,000 researchers, students, and policy makers that transforms how academics explore academic literature through dynamic, interactive citation maps. Users start with one or more seed papers and Litmaps builds a visual map of the most connected and relevant articles, plotted by publication date on the x-axis and citation count on the y-axis, so the most influential recent papers naturally rise to the top right of the map. The platform draws from OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and Crossref to cover over 270 million academic papers across all disciplines. Litmaps' Discover feature runs automated searches to surface papers researchers may not have thought to look for, and its weekly monitoring alerts notify users by email when new relevant papers are published in their area. Maps can be customized by changing the axes to sort by references, citations, or connectivity, and projects can be shared with collaborators or exported to reference managers like Zotero. An Education License offers 75% off commercial pricing for students and academics, and country-based parity pricing makes it accessible globally.

Key Features

Visual Citation Map Builder270M+ Paper DatabaseOpenAlex and Semantic Scholar IntegrationSeed Paper DiscoveryDiscover Automated Search FeatureWeekly Email Monitoring AlertsCustomizable Map AxesPublication Date and Citation Count MappingMulti-Seed Map CombinationZotero Export and SyncTeam Collaboration ModeProject Sharing and ExportingSemantic Search Algorithm OptionInfluential Paper HighlightingMap Download as ImageEducation License 75% OffCountry-Based Parity Pricing

How to Use Litmaps

1Sign up at litmaps.com and create a new project
2Search for a topic or paste a paper title or DOI to set your seed
3Review the visual citation map with papers plotted by date and citation count
4Use Discover to find additional relevant papers outside your seed's citation network
5Enable weekly alerts to receive email updates when new related papers are published

✅ Best For

  • PhD students and academic researchers mapping a new field who want a richer, more customizable visual alternative to Connected Papers, with map axis controls, multi-seed combination, and automatic monitoring alerts.
  • Research teams at universities and institutions who need to collaborate on shared literature maps, export to Zotero, and keep their literature review automatically updated as new papers are published.
  • Policy analysts and science librarians who need to visualize and communicate a field's research landscape to non-specialist stakeholders, using Litmaps' shareable, downloadable map figures.

❌ Not For

  • Researchers who need AI-generated written summaries, data extraction tables, or systematic review automation alongside their paper discovery, as Litmaps focuses exclusively on visual citation mapping and does not include document reading or synthesis tools.
  • Users looking for a completely free, no-limits tool, since Litmaps' free plan restricts you to 20 inputs and 2 maps with 100 articles each, and meaningful advanced use requires the paid Pro plan.

Reviews

0/500

No reviews yet. Be the first to review Litmaps!

Pricing

Free$0
  • ✓Up to 20 inputs
  • ✓2 maps
  • ✓100 articles per map
Pro Commercial$40/mo
  • ✓Unlimited inputs
  • ✓unlimited articles
  • ✓all features
  • ✓monitoring alerts
Pro Education75% off commercial
  • ✓For students and academics with valid institutional affiliation
TeamCustom
  • ✓Team-wide Pro access
  • ✓collaboration features
  • ✓shared projects

Prompts to Try

Build a citation map from this foundational paper on attention mechanisms

Show me the most cited recent papers related to my seed paper on urban microplastics

Combine maps from three seed papers to find the intersection of machine learning and climate modeling

Use Cases

A material science PhD student adds her three most important foundational papers as seeds in Litmaps and within minutes has a visual map of 60 connected studies sorted by recent citation count, helping her identify the five papers every researcher in her field keeps citing that she had not yet read.
A research team lead sets up weekly monitoring alerts on their lab's core Litmap so every team member receives an email the moment a new relevant paper is published, replacing their manual weekly PubMed screening routine and saving the group four hours per week.
A science policy analyst at a government ministry uses Litmaps to generate a shareable citation map of climate adaptation research for a briefing document, presenting the research landscape visually to ministers who are not familiar with academic literature navigation.
A postdoc combines three separate Litmaps on gut microbiome, depression, and diet into a multi-origin map, revealing a dense cluster of papers at the intersection that she had not encountered when searching each topic independently.
A professor uses Litmaps in a graduate seminar to show students how a single 1998 foundational paper on protein folding spawned an entire field, using the live visual map to guide a discussion about scientific influence and citation networks.

Frequently Asked Questions