Literature-review map
A review map with clusters, anchor papers, disagreement lines, and gaps to investigate.
- Familiarity with academic databases
- Basic understanding of citation management
Review builder · 2–3 hours
A literature review is a map, not a summary queue.
This runbook turns search results into themes, tensions, and next reads before you draft prose.
Review map
One page with 4–6 clusters, two anchor papers per cluster, disagreement notes, and missing-evidence questions.
Write the population, intervention, context, and years you will include — plus one tempting topic you will exclude.
Seed Connected Papers or Litmaps with two known-good papers and export the candidates worth opening.
Group opened papers by what they claim, what they measure, and what they cannot answer.
Use Consensus or Elicit to surface where evidence points in different directions, then verify the cited papers yourself.
Write section headings that answer: what is established, what is contested, and what your next search must resolve.
You should now have: Review map.
- Every cluster contains opened papers, not just saved search results.
- Disagreement lines cite the paper designs that create the tension.
- The outline starts from evidence gaps, not AI-generated section names.
PrivacyDo not upload licensed course packs or unpublished manuscripts to consumer tools unless your institution permits it. Keep bibliographic metadata separate from private annotations when in doubt.