Connected Papers is a web-based tool designed to help researchers, students, and academics discover and navigate academic literature. Users enter a seed paper, and the tool generates a visual graph of related works derived from similarity in citations and references — not a direct citation graph. Each node represents a paper, sized and colored by publication year and number of citations, allowing users to quickly identify seminal works and recent developments in a field. The tool also provides "Prior Works" and "Derivative Works" views to trace the intellectual lineage of a paper. Connected Papers is intended to support literature reviews, research exploration, and staying current with a field, without requiring users to manually trace citation chains. It operates entirely in the browser and does not require software installation. A free tier is available with a limited number of graphs per month, while paid plans offer higher usage limits and additional features.
Target audience and deployment
- Solo / Freelancer
- Startup
- SMB
- Mid-market
- Enterprise
- Cloud
Pricing
Free
Academic
Business
Key features
Use cases
- Explore related academic literature visually
- Conduct systematic literature reviews
- Identify seminal and foundational works
- Track emerging research and derivative works
- Discover research gaps and new directions
Best for
- Academic researchers who need to map and navigate large bodies of related literature efficiently
- Graduate students who need to conduct thorough literature reviews for theses or dissertations
- Scientists who need to identify foundational and emerging works in a new research area
- Research librarians who need to help patrons discover relevant academic sources