Search a paper by title or DOI to map how it connects to the literature.
Type a paper's title or its DOI, and this tool shows you the other papers it is linked to. You get a picture of what the paper used, and what came after it.
When you read a research paper, you only see that one paper. You don't see the older papers the authors read before writing it, and you don't see the new papers that came out later and used it. Those links matter. This tool draws them for you so you can find related work fast.
Here is how it works. You search for a paper. The tool finds it and then looks in two directions. It finds the papers your paper cited, which are called references. It also finds the newer papers that cited yours, which are called citing papers. Then it draws all of them as a graph, with your paper in the middle.
A list of names is hard to read. A picture is easier. In the graph, bigger dots mean papers that have been cited more times, so the important ones stand out right away. Click any dot and you can read that paper's title, authors, year, and short summary, plus a link to open it if a free copy exists.
Below the graph there is also a plain list of every linked paper. Each one is marked as a reference or a citing paper, so you can go through them one by one without staring at the graph.
Students use it most when they start a project. You usually find one or two good papers first. The hard part is finding the rest. This tool makes that part quicker. The references point you back to the papers a field is built on. The citing papers show you what people did next. Following those links is often faster than typing keyword after keyword into a search box.
It also helps when you are new to a topic. If the same paper keeps showing up as a big dot, that is a sign it is a key paper you should probably read. So in a few minutes you can spot the papers that matter and the ones you can skip for now.
One more use: checking if a paper still holds up. If lots of recent papers cite it, people are still using its ideas. If almost none do, the paper is either very new or has been quietly dropped. That is useful to know before you build your own work on top of it.
You can search in two ways. The first is to type the title, or even just a few words or the topic, and pick the right paper from the list that pops up. Use this when you remember roughly what the paper is called.
The second way is to paste a DOI. A DOI is the short code that most papers have, like 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2. Each DOI points to exactly one paper, so it is the safest way to search, especially when a title is common and lots of papers share similar words.
All the data here comes from OpenAlex, a large open database of research papers. It knows about hundreds of millions of papers, who wrote them, and which papers cite which. Because OpenAlex gives its data away for free, this tool can be free too, with no sign-up and no limit on how many papers you look at.
A quick, honest note on the limits. The links are only as good as the records behind them. A brand new paper may not show all the papers that cite it yet, because those records take time to appear. Some older or unusual papers may have gaps too. And the free-PDF link only shows up when a free copy really exists. So use the graph as a strong map of what is nearby, not as a full list of every single link.
Plenty of tools like this ask you to pay or sign in after a few searches. This one does not. It is free, it does not need an account, and you can run as many searches as you want. Type a title or a DOI in the box above and start looking around.