Product Overview of Connected Papers
Connected Papers is a powerful research tool designed to facilitate the exploration and visualization of relationships between scientific papers, making academic research more efficient and intuitive.
What Connected Papers Does
Connected Papers helps academics, researchers, and students to visually explore the connections between scientific papers within a specific field. By using a “seed paper” as input, the tool generates an interactive visual graph that maps out related works, highlighting foundational studies, recent developments, and uncovering literature gaps.
Key Features and Functionality
Visual Graphs and Interactive Exploration
- Connected Papers creates a visual map of related papers, allowing users to navigate a network of interconnected studies. Each node in the graph represents a paper, and edges connect papers based on their similarities and citation relationships. The graph visualization helps users identify key studies, track the development of ideas, and discover new trends and gaps in the literature.
Prior and Derivative Works
- The tool allows users to identify prior works, which are highly cited papers that often introduce seminal concepts, theories, or methods. It also helps in discovering derivative works, such as survey papers or recent studies that build upon the original paper. These features are crucial for building a strong foundation for research projects and staying updated with the latest trends.
Customizable Graphs
- Users can customize the graph view by focusing on specific nodes, changing the number of papers displayed, or filtering by date and relevance. This customization enables a more targeted exploration of the academic landscape.
Bibliography Creation and Enhancement
- Connected Papers aids in building comprehensive bibliographies by starting with known references and finding additional relevant papers to fill in the gaps. Users can export reference lists to reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley.
Multi-Origin Graphs
- A recent feature allows users to add multiple origin papers, creating a new graph where all nodes are selected based on their similarity to both origin papers. This feature enhances the ability to explore complex research topics from multiple angles.
Integration with Semantic Scholar
- Connected Papers leverages the Semantic Scholar database, which includes millions of papers across various disciplines. This integration ensures access to a vast and up-to-date corpus of scientific literature.
Benefits and Use Cases
- Streamlined Research: Connected Papers accelerates the process of finding relevant papers, understanding research topics, and discovering new research ideas. It is particularly useful for conducting literature reviews, writing dissertations, and surveying research trends.
- Holistic View: Unlike traditional citation tools, Connected Papers provides a holistic view of the academic field by visualizing not just direct citations but also nuanced connections based on shared references and research themes. This helps in identifying hidden relationships between papers and gaining a deeper understanding of the field’s dynamics.
Plans and Accessibility
- Connected Papers offers both free and premium plans. The free plan includes all features but is limited to 5 graphs per month. The premium plan, available for individuals and groups, including academic institutions and businesses, allows unlimited graph creation and additional features such as archived papers and graph history.
In summary, Connected Papers is an indispensable tool for researchers, offering a visual, interactive, and comprehensive way to explore and understand the complex network of scientific papers, thereby enhancing the efficiency and depth of academic research.