Overview
The goal of a literature review is to find the status quo and define the research gap: what is already done, what is known, and what is still missing.
A typical workflow combines four tools:
- Find papers with Google Scholar.
- Map the field around key papers with Connected Papers.
- Understand key papers in depth with alphaXiv.
- Manage references and citations throughout with Zotero.
Each tool fits a different stage, so use them together rather than picking one.
Google Scholar
- When: Every stage — initial keyword search, checking a paper’s impact, and staying up to date.
- How: Search with keywords, select a paper, then use Cited by to browse that is the prvious work and newer work. Save papers to My library, export BibTeX via the cite (“) button, and set up alerts for keywords or key authors.
- Why: The broadest coverage (journals, conferences, theses, preprints) and citation counts that quickly show which papers matter.
Connected Papers
- When: Early stage — exploring a new topic once you have one or two key papers.
- How: Enter a seed paper to get a graph of similar papers. Use Prior works to find the foundational papers and Derivative works to find recent follow-ups.
- Why: Shows the structure of a field at a glance and surfaces relevant papers that keyword search misses, since similarity is based on shared citations rather than keywords.
alphaXiv
- When: Deep-reading stage — once you have picked the key papers you need to understand in detail.
- How: Replace
arxivwithalphaxivin any arXiv URL to open the paper. It works for any arXiv paper, recent or years old. Ask the built-in AI assistant about the methods, equations, or results, and read the community comments alongside the paper. - Why: A free AI assistant that answers questions in the context of the paper you are reading, so you can work through a dense paper in depth without a paid tool.
[!NOTE] alphaXiv is not only for early-stage preprints. Many established and highly cited papers are also on arXiv, so any paper with an arXiv version can be investigated very efficiently with AI on alphaXiv.
Zotero
- When: Every stage — from the first search to writing the manuscript.
- How: Install the desktop app and the Zotero Connector browser extension, then save papers with one click from Google Scholar, publisher pages, or arXiv. Organize them into collections and tags, and read and annotate PDFs in the built-in reader. When writing, insert citations with the Word or Google Docs plugin, or export BibTeX for LaTeX.
- Why: Free and open source. It keeps all your references and notes in one place and formats citations and bibliographies automatically in any citation style.