In more recent years, visual search tools have been developed which use citation graphs to provide a visual representation of the connections between papers. A notable pioneer in this concept is the search tool Connected Papers, which began as a small project between friends and was released to the public in 2020. Given one academic paper, it analyses tens of thousands of other papers, and selecting all those relevant to the origin paper creates a citation graph and returns a visual representation of it to the viewer. This unique way of looking at research allows the viewer to see an entire area of research at a glance and can greatly aid in understanding the state of a research area and quickly identifying key papers that have lots of connections.
