For any research question there will be existing information that will help answer it. That information will be in the form of journal articles, reports, books, conference proceedings, dissertations and theses, government publications, blogs and more. Literature mapping can help with the discovery of that existing information.
What is literature mapping?
Literature mapping is a way to find additional information by taking a piece of research (i.e. a journal article) and exploring connections between that research and other research that has been published by:-
- Looking at the references listed in the original article
- Looking at other studies written by the same author(s)
- Looking at other studies that have cited the original article (this is called citation searching)
- Using the keywords listed in the original article and using them to find other articles that share those keywords
Literature mapping is done manually but there are online tools that can be used including LitMaps (2 maps with free version), Connected Papers (5 maps per month with free version) and Open Knowledge Maps (focus is on open access so you may not get lots of results). This guide from Princeton University provides an overview of these online tools.
Reference & citation searching in Library Search
If you select this icon from the record for a journal article in Library Search you will be presented with a list of the articles that have been referenced by that article. These will be articles that are available in Library Search. There may be other articles listed that the library does not have access to, you will need to open the article to see the full list.
If you select this icon from the record for a journal article in Library Search you will be presented with a list of articles that have cited this article. These will be articles that are available in Library Search. There may be other articles that have cited the original article that the library does not have access to. There is a citation search feature in Google Scholar which will present you with a more comprehensive list of all articles citing an original article.
Types of literature map
A literature map created manually can be organised using either the hierarchical or circular model. Both start with an article that is of particular interest to the researcher.
Once several related articles have been found, they can then be organised in a way that makes sense to the researcher (i.e. by theme, method, participants, geographical location etc.) using either the hierarchical or circular model to illustrate the connections.
Hierarchical - this features the main topic or study at the top and can be useful when there are lots of themes, sub-themes and methodologies present in the literature that has been found.
Circular - each circle represents literature on a particular theme, method or by a specific author etc.
Example of a literature map using the hierarchical model.