8 ms·

Show HN: Litmaps – Visual Research Discovery Tool

116 points by axtonpitt 5y ago

xaedes 5y ago
Pretty amazing! Is there an option to display the articles in "year - title" instead of "author, year" format? Imho this would give a much better overview over the topics and research itself. With "author, year" format it feels like a tool to analyse citation networks and how people cite each other; more about the social aspect than about the content of the articles.
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  That's a great suggestion, there isn't an option currently but that is reasonably easy to add. One issue is trying to fit enough labels on nodes to make it useful which we have grappled with.
  - mncharity 5y ago
    When exploring a seed article, mousing over a node highlights its filtered graph. Perhaps show its title then as well? And I'd ideally like to also see the abstract then, somewhere. Rather than that requiring a click. Currently, "surfing", orienting exploration, seems regrettably high friction. Click, wait-for-load, look, click, load, look, "hmm, did I click on that one already? yes, drat.", ... "have I clicked on all of them yet? I don't know, maybe I've missed something nifty, but I'm done.". Having faded pink nodes that no longer respond to mouse adds a "ok, to see that node, I currently need to first click on other node". For node labels, perhaps have some kind of title digest? To visually aid the "remind me again which paper that node is?". Perhaps the title in an unreadably small font? When "Run Explore" on a map yields "No results", perhaps add an onboarding hint of what needs to be different in order to have results? Sigh. When using HN, after logging out in a different window, continuing to edit a comment, and clicking "update"... apparently unrecoverably discards the edit?!? :/ Briefly, on the map list of papers, the scrollbar vanishes after a second or two (on desktop firefox), so you lose the visual indication of how far down the list you are. Have to jiggle the list to briefly get that back. On the map list of papers, clicking on a paper popovers the paper info. To go back, there's a close-X, and history-back works. But ESC doesn't, and perhaps should. Off topic but for fun, when using a shallow-3D display (eg AR glasses), it seems information might be segregated/decluttered using depth. So for silly example, there might be lots of title clutter, but if it was on a layer raised above the node graph, one might "look through" the clutter to the graph. And then attentionally shift to the title layer, without that depth step being so large as to trigger refocus eye strain. ... Maybe. Just something I've played with. And it's less than pretty.
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  Just deployed an update to give you an option to change the label to a truncated title. (It's under the top right 'cog' menu on the map).
axtonpitt 5y ago
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" (from 1400-today, 100M+ articles, 1B citations), which we did build but it didn't end up solving the problem that well. We re-approached the problem by pairing a time-based citation visualization, with helpful search tools, and project (or map) state. Our visualization lets you quickly see how search results relate to each other (optionally with nodes sized by citation count). We currently have keyword search, and a network search (called Explore) that scans for highly connected articles up to two degrees away from your map(s) and/or keyword searches. Lastly the project state is nice because as you build up key articles, network search is more targeted, and you can opt into email updates if there are any newly published works that connect to your map 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 articles to what you are working on or are interested in. Keen to hear feedback on our work so far. Thanks.
- austinjp 5y ago
  I'm out and about on mobile at the moment, so can't check in detail. But I just wanted to say thank god you're doing this. Academia is desperately in need of (r)evolution in many areas.
  - axtonpitt 5y ago
    Thanks for the kind words, we'll hopefully have a mobile version one day soon.
- vogon_laureate 5y ago
  Just had a quick play around with it and it is really well executed and quite a useful tool. I'm recommending it to my academic and research friends. Hats off to you and the team.
  - 5y ago
Cenk 5y ago
I took one look at Litmaps when they first launched on ProductHunt and loved it so much we immediately approached them to integrate it with Citationsy (https://citationsy.com/blog/citationsy-and-litmaps/ https://citationsy.com/blog/citationsy-and-litmaps/). The features they have added since then, like email updates if a new paper pops up on your map, colour coding, and reference count, show that the team is on the pulse of what’s useful to researchers and students. Looking forward to seeing what they add next! Take a look at an example map here: https://app.litmaps.co/maps?doi=10.1038/S42256-019-0086-4 https://app.litmaps.co/maps?doi=10.1038/S42256-019-0086-4
- benrbray 5y ago
  Always glad to see better citation tools! Some feedback about the site: After clicking through all the links on the top navigation bar as well as some of the links in the footer, and I didn't see anything except for marketing fluff and testimonials. I was hoping for some screenshots some kind of "features" page, with a section for each major feature of Citationsy, and an in-depth explanation of how it compares to other tools, plus a screenshot of actually using that feature. Did I miss something? If I did, please make it easier to find out what Citationsy actually does! I also tried logging in, but your free trial also demands that I enter my credit card info. Big red flag, no thanks.
timvdalen 5y ago
Looks interesting! Is there a way to get some more 'debug' output from importing? I tried to import a bibliography I had lying around, but it found 0 articles in it (even though it's valid and has 33 entries).
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  Sorry not at the moment, will look into this.
stared 5y ago
The idea is nice, but the search does not work. I tried to look for my own articles, but failed. It showed instead some other articles that for sure don't contain a given work (e.g. I searched for my surname with a word "multiphoton" and yet it showed me some legal articles).
peytoncasper 5y ago
This is really awesome, I love the map for tracking existing papers and exploration for finding relevant ones. Any thoughts of supporting other integrations into something like Notion? Would be awesome to use Litmaps as the central index and attach notes on the papers. Where are you indexing your articles from? Plenty of ML/CS articles, but wasn't able to find someone by their Orchid ID in the Biology/Chemistry space. Looking forward to the full release.
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  Hey there, thanks for the feedback! We have just launched notes and ORCID author search, so hopefully that helps you locate the author you are looking for.
Grimm1 5y ago
I'm so happy to see someone made this! I asked for something similar a few months ago and got crickets. I found something from the 90's that surely people had built on and I would have liked to see what had been done since but, manually tracing through everything would have been exhausting. https://twitter.com/IanTB01/status/1359969167760371720 https://twitter.com/IanTB01/status/1359969167760371720
yellowyacht 5y ago
Fantastic! I played with it some and I'm really impressed. Thanks for not requiring an account. What do you plan to do with it next?
teapourer 5y ago
Great work! Is there a way to share a map state via a URL?
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  Not currently, this is on our todo list.
cjlm 5y ago
This looks interesting, I've been using Connected Papers [0] which does a really good job. Nice to see an alternative. [0] https://www.connectedpapers.com/ https://www.connectedpapers.com/
omarhaneef 5y ago
A few thoughts: 1. This is amazing. I wish I had it years ago, and I could use it now. 2. I like the visualization but my favorite thing is the sense of completeness and influence I get when I look at articles. Rather than relying on someone's opinion of the most influential article, I can see the article and the influence right there. 3. This is early days but I am already running into the frustration of not being able to see all the articles out there. This probably has to do with publishers and paywalls and what not, so probably not your fault, but it is still a problem that has to be dealt with in order to render this truly useful. () () interestingly, over time, it may not matter as much when every paper has a version on ARXIV, but in 2021 I was looking for papers influenced by work done as far ago as the 80s and 90s.
ropeladder 5y ago
Looks really nice. I built a similar site a few years back with an economics/policy/debate focus ( https://thicket.io https://thicket.io ) but gave up/burned out after not getting any users and struggling to manage the data backend. It's great to see other people tackling similar problems.
charlesdaniels 5y ago
This is a really cool idea! I have wished for something like this for a long time. Glad to see someone built it. Sadly however, it seems that the .bib file I get from Zotero isn't supported, since it claims to have found 0 articles in it, despite the fact that I have verified those articles show up when searching for them directly. Edit: TIL that you can also get a .bib file from the "export items" button, as well as from "create bibliography from items". I had been using the latter. It seems that Litmaps only works with .bib files created using "export items".
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  Ah thanks for highlighting this, will fix.
anitil 5y ago
I will be sending this to all my friends in academia. Bravo!

116 points by axtonpitt 5y ago

Pretty amazing! Is there an option to display the articles in "year - title" instead of "author, year" format? Imho this would give a much better overview over the topics and research itself. With "author, year" format it feels like a tool to analyse citation networks and how people cite each other; more about the social aspect than about the content of the articles.

axtonpitt 5y ago
That's a great suggestion, there isn't an option currently but that is reasonably easy to add. One issue is trying to fit enough labels on nodes to make it useful which we have grappled with.
- mncharity 5y ago
  When exploring a seed article, mousing over a node highlights its filtered graph. Perhaps show its title then as well? And I'd ideally like to also see the abstract then, somewhere. Rather than that requiring a click. Currently, "surfing", orienting exploration, seems regrettably high friction. Click, wait-for-load, look, click, load, look, "hmm, did I click on that one already? yes, drat.", ... "have I clicked on all of them yet? I don't know, maybe I've missed something nifty, but I'm done.". Having faded pink nodes that no longer respond to mouse adds a "ok, to see that node, I currently need to first click on other node". For node labels, perhaps have some kind of title digest? To visually aid the "remind me again which paper that node is?". Perhaps the title in an unreadably small font? When "Run Explore" on a map yields "No results", perhaps add an onboarding hint of what needs to be different in order to have results? Sigh. When using HN, after logging out in a different window, continuing to edit a comment, and clicking "update"... apparently unrecoverably discards the edit?!? :/ Briefly, on the map list of papers, the scrollbar vanishes after a second or two (on desktop firefox), so you lose the visual indication of how far down the list you are. Have to jiggle the list to briefly get that back. On the map list of papers, clicking on a paper popovers the paper info. To go back, there's a close-X, and history-back works. But ESC doesn't, and perhaps should. Off topic but for fun, when using a shallow-3D display (eg AR glasses), it seems information might be segregated/decluttered using depth. So for silly example, there might be lots of title clutter, but if it was on a layer raised above the node graph, one might "look through" the clutter to the graph. And then attentionally shift to the title layer, without that depth step being so large as to trigger refocus eye strain. ... Maybe. Just something I've played with. And it's less than pretty.
axtonpitt 5y ago
Just deployed an update to give you an option to change the label to a truncated title. (It's under the top right 'cog' menu on the map).

axtonpitt 5y ago

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" (from 1400-today, 100M+ articles, 1B citations), which we did build but it didn't end up solving the problem that well. We re-approached the problem by pairing a time-based citation visualization, with helpful search tools, and project (or map) state. Our visualization lets you quickly see how search results relate to each other (optionally with nodes sized by citation count). We currently have keyword search, and a network search (called Explore) that scans for highly connected articles up to two degrees away from your map(s) and/or keyword searches. Lastly the project state is nice because as you build up key articles, network search is more targeted, and you can opt into email updates if there are any newly published works that connect to your map 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 articles to what you are working on or are interested in. Keen to hear feedback on our work so far. Thanks.

austinjp 5y ago
I'm out and about on mobile at the moment, so can't check in detail. But I just wanted to say thank god you're doing this. Academia is desperately in need of (r)evolution in many areas.
- axtonpitt 5y ago
  Thanks for the kind words, we'll hopefully have a mobile version one day soon.
vogon_laureate 5y ago
Just had a quick play around with it and it is really well executed and quite a useful tool. I'm recommending it to my academic and research friends. Hats off to you and the team.
- 5y ago

Cenk 5y ago

I took one look at Litmaps when they first launched on ProductHunt and loved it so much we immediately approached them to integrate it with Citationsy (https://citationsy.com/blog/citationsy-and-litmaps/ https://citationsy.com/blog/citationsy-and-litmaps/). The features they have added since then, like email updates if a new paper pops up on your map, colour coding, and reference count, show that the team is on the pulse of what’s useful to researchers and students. Looking forward to seeing what they add next! Take a look at an example map here: https://app.litmaps.co/maps?doi=10.1038/S42256-019-0086-4 https://app.litmaps.co/maps?doi=10.1038/S42256-019-0086-4

benrbray 5y ago
Always glad to see better citation tools! Some feedback about the site: After clicking through all the links on the top navigation bar as well as some of the links in the footer, and I didn't see anything except for marketing fluff and testimonials. I was hoping for some screenshots some kind of "features" page, with a section for each major feature of Citationsy, and an in-depth explanation of how it compares to other tools, plus a screenshot of actually using that feature. Did I miss something? If I did, please make it easier to find out what Citationsy actually does! I also tried logging in, but your free trial also demands that I enter my credit card info. Big red flag, no thanks.

timvdalen 5y ago

Looks interesting! Is there a way to get some more 'debug' output from importing? I tried to import a bibliography I had lying around, but it found 0 articles in it (even though it's valid and has 33 entries).

axtonpitt 5y ago
Sorry not at the moment, will look into this.

stared 5y ago

The idea is nice, but the search does not work. I tried to look for my own articles, but failed. It showed instead some other articles that for sure don't contain a given work (e.g. I searched for my surname with a word "multiphoton" and yet it showed me some legal articles).

peytoncasper 5y ago

This is really awesome, I love the map for tracking existing papers and exploration for finding relevant ones. Any thoughts of supporting other integrations into something like Notion? Would be awesome to use Litmaps as the central index and attach notes on the papers. Where are you indexing your articles from? Plenty of ML/CS articles, but wasn't able to find someone by their Orchid ID in the Biology/Chemistry space. Looking forward to the full release.

axtonpitt 5y ago
Hey there, thanks for the feedback! We have just launched notes and ORCID author search, so hopefully that helps you locate the author you are looking for.

Grimm1 5y ago

I'm so happy to see someone made this! I asked for something similar a few months ago and got crickets. I found something from the 90's that surely people had built on and I would have liked to see what had been done since but, manually tracing through everything would have been exhausting. https://twitter.com/IanTB01/status/1359969167760371720 https://twitter.com/IanTB01/status/1359969167760371720

yellowyacht 5y ago

Fantastic! I played with it some and I'm really impressed. Thanks for not requiring an account. What do you plan to do with it next?

teapourer 5y ago

Great work! Is there a way to share a map state via a URL?

axtonpitt 5y ago
Not currently, this is on our todo list.

cjlm 5y ago

This looks interesting, I've been using Connected Papers [0] which does a really good job. Nice to see an alternative. [0] https://www.connectedpapers.com/ https://www.connectedpapers.com/

omarhaneef 5y ago

A few thoughts: 1. This is amazing. I wish I had it years ago, and I could use it now. 2. I like the visualization but my favorite thing is the sense of completeness and influence I get when I look at articles. Rather than relying on someone's opinion of the most influential article, I can see the article and the influence right there. 3. This is early days but I am already running into the frustration of not being able to see all the articles out there. This probably has to do with publishers and paywalls and what not, so probably not your fault, but it is still a problem that has to be dealt with in order to render this truly useful. () () interestingly, over time, it may not matter as much when every paper has a version on ARXIV, but in 2021 I was looking for papers influenced by work done as far ago as the 80s and 90s.

ropeladder 5y ago

Looks really nice. I built a similar site a few years back with an economics/policy/debate focus ( https://thicket.io https://thicket.io ) but gave up/burned out after not getting any users and struggling to manage the data backend. It's great to see other people tackling similar problems.

charlesdaniels 5y ago

This is a really cool idea! I have wished for something like this for a long time. Glad to see someone built it. Sadly however, it seems that the .bib file I get from Zotero isn't supported, since it claims to have found 0 articles in it, despite the fact that I have verified those articles show up when searching for them directly. Edit: TIL that you can also get a .bib file from the "export items" button, as well as from "create bibliography from items". I had been using the latter. It seems that Litmaps only works with .bib files created using "export items".

axtonpitt 5y ago
Ah thanks for highlighting this, will fix.

anitil 5y ago

I will be sending this to all my friends in academia. Bravo!