Tell Your Research Story with Litmaps

Litmaps helps researchers turn a pile of papers into a visual “research story” by importing relevant articles, mapping their relationships, and then reshaping the layout to highlight what matters most. The workflow starts with building a single Litmap from a complete set of sources—either by importing an existing literature review file or by manually bringing in articles using identifiers like DOIs or IDs. Once the papers are loaded, Litmaps can run an “explore related articles” search that expands the research library automatically, giving researchers a structured way to grow beyond the initial set.

After the map exists, the key move is changing the axes to tell a clearer narrative about the literature. By default, Litmaps sorts articles with publication date on the X-axis and citation count on the Y-axis, making it easy to spot older, highly cited “high impact” work in one corner and newer studies in another. But the axes aren’t fixed: researchers can switch to alternative measures that change what the map emphasizes. Sorting by “map connectivity” orders papers by how interconnected they are, which helps identify the most central work in a literature review. Other sorting options include reference count and a Litmaps-specific metric called “momentum.” Momentum adjusts citation counts for the natural advantage older papers have in accumulating citations, so newer papers that have unexpectedly high influence rise into view. A slider lets users tune how strongly that recency bias is corrected, balancing “surprising impact” against raw citation totals.

Litmaps also supports thematic storytelling through visual customization. Articles can be tagged into subtopics, and labels can be added to describe themes or concepts across the map. Titles can appear over the visualization, while per-article labels can be customized using a paintbrush tool. Researchers can further differentiate groups by assigning special icons and colors—using a “halo” ring to make certain papers stand out—so the map communicates structure at a glance rather than requiring readers to decode it from text.

The platform goes beyond existing databases by allowing users to add custom articles, including proposed or not-yet-included work, so the map can reflect the full arc of a research plan. Finally, Litmaps makes sharing straightforward: maps can be shared via URL or email, and images can be exported as screenshots with adjustable export parameters for use in papers, presentations, or other published work.

In short, Litmaps turns literature review work into an interactive, adjustable visual narrative—one that highlights impact, centrality, and recency-adjusted influence, while also making themes and future directions easy to communicate to others.