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The most important modern research in one infographic

Want to know what the top papers are within an academic field? An interactive web will show you the way.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

Mapping out research sources can be difficult, but an interactive infographic is available to show you a visual web of modern scientific research papers.

ArXiv is an online archive which stores scientific papers in scientific and mathematics fields ranging from astrophysics to high energy theory and space. Academic papers often rely on citations from previous research to form and back up arguments, and while clicking through these notes can form a web of its own, it can be a long process.

This is where the Paperscape map comes in. Created by physicist Damien George and Ph.D student Rob Knegjens, the interactive infographic displays all papers from the arXiv archive and is updated on a daily basis.

Information and citations are displayed by circles. Once you have zoomed in on an area of interest -- for example, black hole theory -- you can work out which papers are most often cited based on how large the circle is.

Disciplines are color-coded, and papers that cross-reference the same sources are placed closely together.

The infographic is useful for academics, researchers and students who want to remain up-to-date in their field, or need to source papers for their essays. Sadly, the map is not fully searchable -- although this is to be a future feature -- but it can still be a useful tool to grasp the most influential sources in an area of research.

Check out the full infographic here.

Via: PopSci

Image credit: ArXiv

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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