Map Your Research Field Visually with ResearchRabbit

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What you should see: A clean dashboard with a search bar and a "Create Collection" button.

Click + New Collection and name it something descriptive (e.g., "Community College STEM Retention" or "Social Media and Political Polarization"). This is like a project folder that holds your papers and maps.

In the search bar at the top, search for a paper you already know and trust as central to your topic. Use the paper's title or author name. When you find it, click + Add to Collection.

Add 2–3 seed papers to start. These don't need to be comprehensive — just foundational papers in your area.

What you should see: Your collection now shows 2–3 paper cards with basic metadata. Troubleshooting: If a paper doesn't appear, try searching by DOI or adding it manually via the "Add by DOI" option.

Click the Visualize button (or the network icon) in your collection view. A node-and-edge graph appears:

• Each circle (node) = a paper
• Lines between nodes = citation relationships (one cited the other)
• Clusters = groups of papers that cite each other heavily — these are the "schools of thought" in your field

What you should see: Your seed papers in the center, with connected papers arranged around them. Larger nodes = more highly cited.

Click any node in the map to see the paper's title, authors, year, and abstract. Papers that are connected to multiple nodes you care about are worth adding to your collection.

Use the left panel to filter by:

• Year (narrow to recent work)
• Cited by your papers (papers that reference your seeds)
• References in your papers (papers your seeds cited)

Click + Add to Collection on any promising paper directly from the visualization.

Look at the visualization for tight clusters of papers — these represent sub-fields or methodological approaches within your topic. Click the papers in a cluster you don't recognize. Often this surfaces work from a different disciplinary angle you hadn't considered.

Also look at the author panel on the left — it shows which authors appear most frequently in your network. These are the scholars who define this field.

Click Export in the top right of your collection. Choose Zotero (if you use it) or CSV for a spreadsheet. This gives you your expanded reading list with all metadata organized and ready to work with.