Conducting a literature review can feel overwhelming. With so many research papers published yearly, finding the most important and relevant studies can be tough. That's where Litmaps comes in. This article will show you how to use Litmaps for an efficient literature review.

Note that EdUHK Library does not currently have a subscription to Litmaps. This introduction to the tool is solely for educational and research purposes.

What is Litmaps?


Litmaps is an AI-powered research discovery tool that creates interactive visual maps of academic literature. By analyzing citation networks, Litmaps can help you: 

  • See how literature connects
  • Find relevant articles
  • Not miss important papers
  • Get updated on changing literature

  • Stay organized

     

Visualize Your Research with Litmaps

 

Step 1: Go to Litmaps and set up a free account. We start by looking for just one paper on your topic. Our research topic is “The Impact of Virtual Reality on Learning Outcomes in Higher Education”.

Tip: Look for articles with more citations. This will make it easier to find more related literature in the next step.

Step 2:  Select one article as your starting article and click “Explore Related Articles” 

Step 3: The initial Litmap provides a foundational overview of the scientific literature connected to your starting article, but it’s only the beginning. To explore more topics, click "More like this" for articles that interest you.  Then, you can click "Refresh" to see new recommendations.

Step 4: Tag articles by assigning them different keywords and color codes. Over time, this will help you create a map similar to the one shown below. What's more, Litmaps offers multiple options for sharing your visualization map with others.

Monitor Your Map to Stay Up-To-Date

 

After completing a literature review, it can take months or years for works to be published. To stay up to date, the best approach is to enable the ongoing monitoring of your map. Simply go to the map’s homepage and click “Enable Automatic Monitoring”. Once activated, Litmaps will automatically run your map through its search algorithm every week and notify you if any newly published articles match or connect to your research.

Summary

 

A successful literature review tells a concise story about the topic, leaving the reader satisfied with the field's current state while addressing gaps and framing new research.

Litmaps displays the most relevant papers in batches of 10, organized in a unique graph format. This graph highlights highly cited papers (top) and recent publications (right), making identifying influential and up-to-date research easy.