Consensus vs Litmaps

Consensus

Consensus Search revolutionizes academic research by enabling users to ask natural language questions and receive synthesized, evidence-based answers drawn from millions of peer-reviewed papers. The AI-powered search engine goes far beyond traditional keyword matching—it understands research context, interprets scientific methodology, and identifies relevant findings even when papers use different terminology. When a user asks a question like 'Does meditation reduce anxiety?', the system analyzes hundreds of relevant studies, extracts their conclusions, and presents a coherent synthesis showing what the collective research indicates. Each answer includes the Consensus Meter visualization showing agreement levels, plus direct links to source papers for verification. The search also highlights key findings from individual studies, showing sample sizes, methodologies, and statistical significance to help users evaluate evidence quality. Transform hours of manual literature review into seconds of AI-powered research synthesis with fully cited, verifiable answers

✓ Transform hours of manual literature review into seconds of AI-powered research synthesis with fully cited, verifiable answers

Litmaps

Litmaps' Seed Map feature allows researchers to start with any paper they already know and automatically generate a comprehensive visualization of related literature. By entering a DOI, title, or selecting from search results, the platform's AI analyzes the seed paper's content, citations, and semantic fingerprint to identify and map dozens or hundreds of related papers. The resulting visualization shows papers as nodes positioned by similarity, with connecting lines indicating citation relationships. Users can adjust parameters like time range, similarity threshold, and citation depth to customize the scope of their exploration. This feature is particularly powerful for researchers entering a new field, as it transforms a single known paper into a gateway to understanding an entire research domain. Transforms a single known paper into a comprehensive map of an entire research field, eliminating hours of manual searching and ensuring no important related work is missed.

✓ Transforms a single known paper into a comprehensive map of an entire research field, eliminating hours of manual searching and ensuring no important related work is missed

Consensus

Study Insights provides AI-generated summaries of research papers that extract and highlight the most critical information without requiring users to read entire publications. The machine learning models are trained to identify paper structure and extract key elements including research questions, methodology, sample characteristics, primary findings, statistical results, and author conclusions. Each summary is structured consistently, making it easy to quickly compare findings across multiple papers. The system also identifies and highlights limitations acknowledged by researchers, potential conflicts of interest, and funding sources—critical context often buried in paper text. For quantitative studies, key metrics and statistical significance values are prominently displayed, helping users quickly assess the strength of findings. Understand the essential findings, methodology, and limitations of any research paper in minutes rather than hours

✓ Understand the essential findings, methodology, and limitations of any research paper in minutes rather than hours

Litmaps

The Citation Network Analysis feature provides deep insights into how research papers reference and build upon each other over time. Litmaps visualizes both forward citations (papers that cite a given work) and backward citations (papers that a work references), creating a temporal view of how ideas propagate through the scientific community. The platform identifies highly-cited hub papers that serve as foundational works, as well as emerging papers gaining rapid citation momentum. Users can trace the evolution of specific concepts or methodologies through citation chains, understanding how research questions have been refined and answered over decades. The analysis also reveals citation clusters that may indicate distinct research communities or competing theoretical frameworks. Reveals the intellectual lineage and impact trajectory of research ideas, helping researchers identify foundational works and emerging influential papers in their field.

✓ Reveals the intellectual lineage and impact trajectory of research ideas, helping researchers identify foundational works and emerging influential papers in their field

Consensus

The Consensus Meter is Consensus's signature feature that visually represents the level of scientific agreement on any research question. When users search for a topic, the meter displays the percentage of studies that support, oppose, or show mixed results on the question at hand. This visualization transforms the abstract concept of 'scientific consensus' into an immediately understandable graphic. The meter is powered by AI that reads and classifies findings from relevant papers, categorizing each study's conclusions and aggregating them into an overall consensus view. Users can click through to see which specific papers support each position, enabling deeper investigation of why certain studies reached different conclusions. This feature is particularly valuable for contested topics where understanding the weight of evidence—not just individual studies—is crucial. Instantly understand whether scientific research supports, opposes, or is divided on any topic without manually reviewing dozens of papers

✓ Instantly understand whether scientific research supports, opposes, or is divided on any topic without manually reviewing dozens of papers

Litmaps

The Discover Feed is Litmaps' intelligent recommendation engine that continuously monitors academic databases for new publications relevant to a researcher's interests. Unlike generic alerts based on keywords, the Discover Feed uses the semantic understanding derived from a user's existing maps and saved papers to identify truly relevant new work, even if it uses different terminology. The feed learns from user interactions, becoming more accurate over time as researchers save, dismiss, or explore recommended papers. Notifications can be configured for immediate alerts on high-relevance papers or weekly digests summarizing new literature. This feature ensures researchers stay current without the cognitive burden of manually checking multiple journals and databases. Eliminates the fear of missing important new research by providing personalized, AI-curated updates that improve over time based on user behavior and preferences.

✓ Eliminates the fear of missing important new research by providing personalized, AI-curated updates that improve over time based on user behavior and preferences

Consensus

The Citation Network feature maps the intellectual lineage of research by visualizing how papers cite and build upon each other over time. Users can explore interactive network graphs showing foundational papers that established key concepts, subsequent studies that replicated or extended findings, and recent developments pushing the field forward. The visualization identifies highly-cited influential papers, research clusters working on related questions, and the evolution of ideas across decades of scholarship. This feature helps researchers understand not just what is known, but how knowledge developed—which early studies were seminal, which findings have been consistently replicated, and which represent emerging areas of investigation. The network also reveals connections between seemingly disparate research areas, enabling interdisciplinary discovery. Trace the evolution of scientific ideas and identify the most influential foundational research in any field

✓ Trace the evolution of scientific ideas and identify the most influential foundational research in any field

Litmaps

Collaborative Workspaces enable research teams to build shared knowledge bases and conduct literature reviews collectively. Team members can contribute papers to shared maps, add annotations and notes visible to colleagues, and discuss specific papers within the platform. The workspace maintains a complete history of contributions, allowing teams to see how their collective understanding has evolved. Permission controls enable different access levels for team leads, contributors, and viewers. Integration with institutional single sign-on systems simplifies team management for academic departments and research groups. The feature is particularly valuable for systematic reviews, grant applications, and multi-author publications where comprehensive literature coverage is essential. Transforms literature review from a solitary task into a collaborative effort, ensuring comprehensive coverage while distributing the workload across team members.

✓ Transforms literature review from a solitary task into a collaborative effort, ensuring comprehensive coverage while distributing the workload across team members

Consensus

Research Collections enables users to organize discovered papers into custom folders for ongoing research projects, literature reviews, or collaborative team efforts. Users can create hierarchical folder structures, add personal notes and annotations to saved papers, tag papers with custom labels, and share collections with collaborators. The collaboration features support real-time teamwork on literature reviews, with team members able to add papers, comment on findings, and discuss research within the platform. Collections sync across devices, and users can export entire collections to reference management tools like Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote in standard citation formats. The system also provides collection-level analytics showing research trends, publication dates, and consensus patterns across saved papers. Organize, annotate, and collaborate on research projects with team members while maintaining seamless integration with existing reference management workflows

✓ Organize, annotate, and collaborate on research projects with team members while maintaining seamless integration with existing reference management workflows

Litmaps

Litmaps provides comprehensive export capabilities that integrate seamlessly with researchers' existing workflows and tools. Maps can be exported as high-resolution images suitable for publications, presentations, and grant applications, with customizable styling options for different contexts. Citation data exports in multiple formats including BibTeX, RIS, and EndNote, enabling direct import into reference management software like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote. The platform also offers API access for programmatic integration with institutional repositories, research information systems, and custom analysis pipelines. CSV exports of paper metadata support further analysis in spreadsheet applications or statistical software, while PDF exports create shareable reports summarizing map contents and key findings. Ensures that insights discovered in Litmaps flow seamlessly into publications, presentations, and other research tools without manual data re-entry or format conversion.

✓ Ensures that insights discovered in Litmaps flow seamlessly into publications, presentations, and other research tools without manual data re-entry or format conversion