Litmaps

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand, Litmaps provides a specialized platform for researchers, students, and professionals to streamline the often laborious process of conducting a literature review. The company emerged from the co-founders' own frustrations with academic search software, particularly the challenges faced by one of the founders during his PhD research. Litmaps was established by Axton Pitt, who now serves as CEO, and Kyle Webster. Digl Dixon also joined as a co-founder. The initial idea was to create a comprehensive 'map of all science', but this approach proved less effective than desired.

The business pivoted to its current model, which focuses on creating a more targeted and interactive research discovery experience. Litmaps operates as a freemium SaaS platform, generating revenue through paid subscriptions that offer enhanced features. The business model includes a free plan with basic search and limited map creation, a Pro plan with unlimited access, and custom plans for teams, institutions, and specific classroom or country-based needs. The client base is global, spanning students, individual researchers, academic labs, and entire institutions across 150 countries.

The core of Litmaps' service is its ability to create interactive, visual maps of academic literature. Users can start with a few relevant 'seed' articles, and the platform's algorithm, which utilizes citation networks, identifies and displays related papers. This visualization helps researchers understand the connections between studies, track the historical progression of a topic, and identify influential works or potential research gaps. The platform's database contains over 270 million papers. Key features include the ability to search by keyword, explore the citation network up to two degrees away from a user's collection, and set up automated email alerts for newly published, relevant articles. Litmaps also allows for collaboration through map sharing and integrates with reference managers like Zotero to enhance a researcher's workflow.

Keywords: literature review, citation network analysis, research discovery, academic search, scientific literature visualization, research workflow, reference management integration, research collaboration, literature mapping, systematic review, academic research tool, citation analysis, research gap identification, scholarly articles, Zotero integration, scientific visualization, research monitoring, academic paper discovery, knowledge mapping, research assistant