[HN Gopher] Show HN: Litmaps - Visual Research Discovery Tool
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Show HN: Litmaps - Visual Research Discovery Tool
Author : axtonpitt
Score : 104 points
Date : 2021-04-22 08:46 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (app.litmaps.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (app.litmaps.co)
| cjlm wrote:
| 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/
| xaedes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| timvdalen wrote:
| 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).
| Cenk wrote:
| 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/). 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
| benrbray wrote:
| 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.
| stared wrote:
| 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).
| omarhaneef wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Looks really nice. I built a similar site a few years back with
| an economics/policy/debate focus ( 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.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| 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.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| 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
| charlesdaniels wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Ah thanks for highlighting this, will fix.
| teapourer wrote:
| Great work! Is there a way to share a map state via a URL?
| axtonpitt wrote:
| Not currently, this is on our todo list.
| yellowyacht wrote:
| 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?
| axtonpitt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words, we'll hopefully have a mobile
| version one day soon.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| I love being able to explore citation graphs this way. I tried
| creating a couple of maps from recently published seed articles
| (from Pubmed, if it matters) and found that only 50-60% of the
| cited works showed up in the map. I assume this reflects
| incompleteness of the underlying public citation data? Is there
| any way users can help fill in the gaps?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I like it and can see myself using it a lot. Looking forward to
| trying it with my whole collection rather than individual
| papers, though I also expect this will bring my computer to a
| screeching halt XD
|
| One gripe: when asked for a paper title, I tried submitting a
| DOI link instead and it failed dismally. You could probably
| reduce server load for title lookup by allowing this as an
| alternative.
|
| Also, I would like some sort of visual indicator to distinguish
| between works-cited-by a paper and works-which-cite the same
| paper. Just glancing at the map, it's not that obvious which is
| which from color or shape and they're mixed up in the default
| listing. When I find an interesting paper I often want to dig
| into its antecedents first and look at its influence afterward,
| but I don't see a clear visual representation of temporality
| here.
| drewbuschhorn wrote:
| That looks really great! In my attempt to do something similar
| ( https://github.com/drewbuschhorn/DoctorMoon ) I kept having
| issues from the various publisher's apis not playing nice with
| each other. How are you guys shimming around that for general
| science?
|
| Have you considered flagging paths for publications that get
| retracted? I've always thought that a 'this paper you're using
| has three retracted parent papers,' would be valuable.
|
| Excited to see where you guys go with this!
| vogon_laureate wrote:
| 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.
| axtonpitt wrote:
| Thanks a lot, will pass on the feedback.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Mind maps maniac here, super helpful tool! The user experience
| is delightful. Thanks and best of luck with all. You have new
| user.
| cableclasper wrote:
| This is brilliant work. I've been playing with this for the
| last half hour and have found cool papers that I otherwise
| wouldn't have. To me, this has a great edge over google scholar
| and lens.
|
| A wishlist:
|
| 1) To be able to share maps with fellow researchers, not as
| pdfs or bib files, but as a url to the map so that they can
| interact with it. I can see that a "share link" is possible for
| an article, but not for a custom map. Such a link could also be
| used to embed such maps on sites like how one can with plots
| from https://ourworldindata.org/
|
| 2) To be able to get more metadata like sponsor, country, etc.
| like https://www.lens.org does.
|
| 3) To be able to upload pdfs and annotate them. I can see why
| this is dicey, but if possible, would be great to see an
| integration with something like
| https://fermatslibrary.com/margins
|
| > It's currently in early access so it's free to use, and you
| don't need to create an account to get started.
|
| I know software developers need to eat and totally respect your
| choice in making it a paid service in the future, but I will
| confess a deep desire for such a thing to be affordable, if not
| free.
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