This Literature Research Network is an interactive co-publication network explorer that maps how researchers collaborate across a field of study.
What am I looking at?
The network graph on the right shows researchers as circles connected by lines when they've co-authored a publication together. Larger circles mean more publications. The clusters that form reveal research communities — groups of scholars who frequently collaborate.
How to explore
- Search — type a topic, author name, keyword, or institution in the search bar. Results appear on the left; the network updates on the right.
- Click a researcher — navigate into their collaboration network. Use "Full Network" to see all papers by their co-authors.
- 1st / 2nd Degree — toggle between direct co-authors (1st) and co-authors of co-authors (2nd) for a wider view.
- Hover over a researcher — see their details: publications, citations, institution, and number of connections.
- Hover over cluster labels — see the top keywords that distinguish each research community.
Off-topic collaborators (white rings)
When you have a topic filter active and toggle to 2nd Degree, some researchers will appear with a bright white double ring around their node. These are the people who keep showing up because they lead collaborative work alongside the researchers who study the filtered topic, but their own publications aren't on it. They might be specialists in an adjacent area, methodologists who support multiple projects, or researchers who deliberately work near a topic without publishing on it. Hovering a ringed node tells you what they actually study and how many shared papers they've led with topic specialists; clicking opens their full publication list so you can verify.
The flag is a heuristic, not a verdict — it just narrows a large network down to a much smaller set of researchers worth a closer look. If it's not useful for your purposes, you can turn the rings off in the network settings panel (gear icon, bottom-left of the network area).
Filters
Narrow your view using the left panel filters:
- Years — slide to focus on a specific time period
- Research Field — filter by academic discipline
- Author Country — where researchers are based
- Study Location — where the research was conducted
- Researched Population — who was studied
- Doc Type — articles, books, dissertations, etc.
- Access Type — open access, closed, or free PDF available
Paper details
Click any paper in the list to see its full metadata: authors, journal, citation count, field-weighted citation impact (FWCI), keywords, study location, population, funders, SDGs, and the abstract. Links to the DOI, ORCID profiles, and OpenAlex are provided where available.
Sharing
Your current search and filters are reflected in the URL — copy it to share a specific view. The Share button opens an email with the link and a description of what you're viewing.
Data sourced from OpenAlex, supplemented by Semantic Scholar, Crossref, and ORCID. Built with D3.js.