Research Rabbit is a free online tool that creates literature maps using citations. The literature map is a visual way to see how your articles are connected. The map may also be viewed as a network or timeline. Research Rabbit will also recommend articles and collaborators based on your research interests. You can set alerts to be notified of new articles and share collections as well.
Research Rabbit can import collections from Zotero or build a new collection using PubMed, DOI, or keyword searching.
You need to create an account to use Research Rabbit, but it is free.
Research Rabbit is a literature mapping tool that helps you discover and visualize connections between academic papers. Instead of starting with a traditional keyword search, you begin with a few "seed papers" that are central to your topic. The tool then finds similar work, earlier work (citations), and later work (papers that cite your seed papers), and presents the results in a visual network or timeline. This helps you quickly see the landscape of a field, identify key authors, and find relevant research that you might have missed with a standard search. You can also integrate it with Zotero to easily add new papers to your citation library.
To get started, you can upload your Zotero folder easily by going to the upper left corner and choosing "Import Zotero Collection."
Once your collection is uploaded into Research Rabbit, you can see your list of papers, and then the pane to the right is a list of similar works, earlier works, and later works. It will also list the total number of authors in your group, and then suggest new authors.
If you click on any of the 'Explore Papers' options, you will get a visual diagram of similar papers to your group.
You can zoom in to see more detail. Notice the paper in green (Woodin, 2010) is one from my original group. If I click on the paper 2 away (Labov, 2010) information about that paper appears to the right. I can then choose to add that paper to my group.
Once the paper is added, make sure that you re-sync your Research Rabbit with Zotero, and the new papers that you have chosen will now be in your Zotero folder. (Please be aware, you may not have a PDF with that new paper. You will have to see if USA has access or request it through InterLibrary Loan.)