How to use LitBeacon

Last updated 24 October 2026

LitBeacon helps you find your way around an unfamiliar research field. Type the name of a field and LitBeacon gathers about two dozen real papers that you can look at three ways: a guide that suggests where to start reading, a timeline of how the topic developed, and a map of how the papers connect.

Searching

Search for a specific field or topic, such as graph neural networks, CRISPR gene editing or Arabidopsis TRAPPII. LitBeacon then:

1. collects about 150 candidate papers from OpenAlex in several ways (by relevance, citations, recency, reviews, and what the top papers cite);
2. asks an AI model to read each candidate's title and abstract and say whether it is about your topic, near it, or about something else, quoting the passage it relied on;
3. chooses about 24 papers that together span the field, and places each in one reading category;
4. connects them by citations, shared references, similar content, shared topics and shared authors.

A fresh search takes a little while, since the AI model needs to process each candidate paper. If you want to see a quick example, click on one of the Examples on the start page.

The reading categories

In the Diagram, read from left to right; in the Cards list, from top to bottom. Hover over, or tab to, a category name in the guide to see its explanation.

• ▶Starters These are up to three reviews or tutorials to read first. They are a recent review that cites many of the papers in this search, a comprehensive one that cites many of them and has a long reference list, and one that many of the papers in this search cite.
• ■Foundations Earlier work that many of the papers in this search cite. This is the background literature of the field.
• ★Deep dive Papers directly about your topic, grouped by subtopic.
• ○Surrounding field The processes, machinery and problems that your topic sits inside. Reading these would make papers in the deep dive easier to understand.
• ✦Recent work The newest papers in the field.
• ⚙Toolkit Databases, software and methods the papers use or cite.
• ?Unclassified Papers LitBeacon could not classify, such as retracted papers.

Subtopic names come from the papers' OpenAlex topics and titles. A subtopic with only one paper in a section is listed under Other topics. Click on the paper to see the exact subtopic name.

You can also change any paper's category: choose it when you add the paper, or use Move category to… in the paper's window.

Working with papers

• Open a paper by clicking its circle or card. You will see its abstract, authors, journal name and year, and why it was chosen.
• Mark read to keep track of what papers you have finished in the guide.
• Shortlist the papers you want to keep, then Export shortlist for a BibTeX file you can import into a reference manager like Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote. You can also click on Export citation in a paper's window to export the citation for a single paper.
• Add papers with the + button: Auto-add up to 4 papers LitBeacon recommends from the field, or look one up by title or DOI. You can add papers to any section, or let LitBeacon place them in the most appropriate section. In the Timeline or Map layout, scroll to the bottom of a paper's window to add three closest papers.
• Recent searches on the right sidebar shows your search history, and are synced across devices if you have an account. Click on a recent search to open a map right away without having to repeat a search.

Three layouts: Guide, Timeline and Map

• Guide is the reading order. Press Guide again to switch between the Diagram (every category side by side) and Cards (a list with full titles and abstract excerpts). Phones start with Cards.
• Timeline places the papers by publication year, so you can see how the field developed.
• Map shows how the papers connect. Drag papers to arrange them as you like; Clean layout puts them back into their initial positions.

A node is a circle or diamond in the map and represents a paper. A circle usually marks an experimental paper, while a diamond marks a review or survey. The node size follows the citation measure chosen in Node size: total citations, or citations per year. Scroll inside the map to zoom in or out. Click on the arrows on the edge of the left and right sidebars to expand or collapse them.

What the arrows between nodes mean

An arrow between two nodes indicates that the two papers are related. By default, the arrow points from the cited paper to the citing paper (from old to new). The direction can be reversed with the Arrow direction toggle on the right sidebar. The style of the arrow indicates the type of relationship: one paper cites the other, they share references, their content is similar, they share topics, or they share an author. Only the strongest few connections of each paper are drawn.

In the bar above the map, Show links hides the weaker connections, and Connections chooses which kinds are shown. Unticking a category will hide its connections, except citations, which stay as gray arrows.

What LitBeacon does not claim

• LitBeacon chooses about 24 papers from about 150 candidates; important work can be missing.
• The AI relevance check can be wrong. Missing abstracts, or missing reference lists in the databases, can change which papers are chosen and how they are grouped.
• Citations do not measure quality, and a recent paper is not necessarily a new direction.
• Different wording for the same field can give a noticeably different guide. Try a synonym as well. When you type a short form such as “biotech” and the fuller form (“biotechnology”) appears in at least three times as many papers, LitBeacon searches the fuller form (but also offers to search the original term). A misspelled word is handled the same way: the AI model suggests a corrected spelling (“cystein” to “cysteine”), and LitBeacon searches it only if it changes nothing but spelling and appears in at least three times as many papers. British and American spellings are searched together (“tumour” also finds “tumor”), and the guide says when. While you type, the box suggests wordings that papers use; picking one puts it in the box without starting the search.
• Whether a Starter suits a beginner has not yet been checked by readers in most fields.

Which fields it suits

LitBeacon works best in fields whose literature is mostly journal articles, reviews and preprints with abstracts, as in most of the life sciences, natural sciences, medicine and computer science. Its testing so far has been in those areas, mostly biology.

• Books and book chapters are not included, so fields whose key works are books, as in much of the humanities, are poorly represented.
• Searches and papers in languages other than English are not well supported.
• Very new fields with few papers can give short guides.

Questions