Research metrics

This page summarises some databases which use a citation-network based approach to searching - papers are identified and recommended on the basis of their connection to other papers, not just on the basis of their content. This approach can be very effective in some circumstances, but is potentially a bit more difficult to interpret and does not allow for systematic, comprehensive or replicable search strategies, such as might be required for a systematic review.

UCL does not have a subscription to any of these, but you may find them useful as alternative tools for your research.

Connected Papers is a tool for generating a list of papers which are seen as particularly relevant to a single source paper. It can be useful for quickly generating a list of relevant reading to investigate.

The tool works by taking a specific paper, and identifying similar papers via its co-citation network – papers that are cited by other papers which cite it, or cite the same papers as it does. It selects a group of “most closely related” papers and displays these as a graph or a list. It also shows “prior” and “derived” papers which are based on conventional citation networks – the papers most commonly cited by, or citing, those in the list.

These papers are likely to be relevant, but it does not provide a comprehensive list, and there may be limits to the co-citation approach. It would be useful for quickly getting a broader reading list from a single paper, but it would not be useful for any kind of comprehensive or systematic review, as a large number of potentially relevant papers might be omitted - it will never display more than a certain number of the 'most related' papers, no matter how relevant the others might be.

Connected Papers is a commercial tool and UCL does not have a subscription, but an individual account is free for up to five analyses per month, or a single month's access to the full service can be purchased for a small fee.

Research Rabbit takes a single paper or a group of papers (eg a reference list from EndNote or Zotero) and generates recommendations from that. It shows a graph which represents citations between the recommended papers and the source papers, identifying the most heavily connected ones. It also offers a timeline view, and can generate lists of papers by individual authors for analysis.

The exact algorithm used to generate these recommended papers are generated is not clear, but it seems likely to include co-citation analysis as well as other aspects such as keywording, textual similarity, or coauthorship.

As with ConnectedPapers, it could potentially be very useful for finding new relevant papers, especially since it can use a large range of papers as sources, but should not be assumed to be comprehensive. We would not recommend using it for systematic reviews but it could be useful for scoping a review, or getting a broad overview of a field.

The tool is free to use for individuals.

Litmaps is a tool to generate citation maps based on the other works citing a given source paper. This allows you to navigate to other papers and, in principle, allows identifying the most relevant and closely linked papers.

As with Connected Papers, these papers are likely to be relevant, but it does not provide a comprehensive list, and they may not be the most relevant papers that would be selected by an informed human reviewer. Some potentially relevant papers might be omitted, making it insufficient for a comprehensive or systematic review. However, for an initial overview, or for looking for papers that might have been missed by an initial search, it could be useful.

Litmaps is a commercial tool and UCL does not have a subscription, but an individual account is free with a limited level of searching, or a single month's access to the full service can be purchased at a student rate.