SciNodes documentation
In short: SciNodes is an AI-assisted research platform from Scholaris Labs for literature review and scientometric analysis. You collect publications into a project, see how they connect on network maps, read and annotate their PDFs, gather evidence, and ask AI research assistants questions about all of it. Open the app at app.scinodes.com. It runs in a desktop web browser.
The SciNodes family
| Product | What it is for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| SciNodes (the app) | Your research workspace: projects, publication libraries, research maps, PDFs, notes, Research in Formation and AI chats | app.scinodes.com |
| SciVerse | Free public search of the scholarly record: publications, authors, organizations, journals, conferences and keywords | sciverse.scinodes.com |
| SciNodes Academy | Free courses and articles on bibliometrics and research mapping | academy.scinodes.com |
| SciNodes Support | File and track support tickets | support.scinodes.com |
One SciNodes account works across all four. For now you sign in to each product separately with the same email and password, or with the same Google or Microsoft account.
Start here
New to SciNodes? Work through these in order:
Find a guide by goal
| I want to… | Read |
|---|---|
| Run a literature review from start to finish | Run a literature review |
| Get the lay of the land in a field that's new to me | Map a new research field |
| Find the publications everyone builds on | Find influential publications |
| Find experts, research groups or collaborators | Find authors and collaborators |
| Decide which journal or conference to target | Choose where to publish |
| Bring in my Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, Scopus or Web of Science library | Bring your reference library |
| Read PDFs, highlight them and collect evidence | Read, annotate and collect evidence |
| Write notes and produce a bibliography | Write with citations |
| Ask AI questions about my maps and publications | Ask AI about your research |
| Work on a project with colleagues | Work with your team |
| Search the literature without signing up | Explore without an account |
| Get AI answers and translations in my language | Research in another language |
| Learn bibliometrics | Learn bibliometrics |
Key ideas in one minute
- Project: your unit of work. Each project has its own library, maps, notes, chats and collaborators.
- Corpus: the set of publications a project works over. SciNodes always calls a scholarly item a publication.
- Research map: a network built from your corpus: citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence or term co-occurrence. See Map types.
- Research in Formation (RIF): the place where you collect research objects (key publications, concepts, methods, authors) and the evidence behind them.
- Research assistants: AI chats that can see the map, cluster, node, publication or file you point them at.
- Credits: all AI features draw from one weekly credit budget that resets every Sunday at 00:00 UTC. See Credits and usage.
The Glossary defines every term.
What SciNodes needs
- A desktop or laptop browser window at least 768 × 500 pixels. Phones and small windows are blocked for now. See System requirements.
- The interface is in English. AI explanations, assistant replies and translations are available in 20 languages.
Get help
- Troubleshooting and the FAQ
- Error messages explained
- Contact Support
- Features that are built but not yet available are labelled Coming soon and listed in What's coming.