Bibliometrix vs Litmaps

Bibliometrix is an open-source R tool for quantitative scientometric and bibliometric research. Its analyses include descriptive statistics, co-citation, co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, and historiographic networks. It works with bibliographic files from Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, The Lens, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library; companion R packages add API support for Dimensions, NCBI PubMed, and Scopus. Biblioshiny provides a web interface for people without coding or R knowledge, while the package can also work with other statistical R packages. Biblioverse packages extend the system from data collection to text and content analysis. The openalexR package can bring publication, author, institution, and concept metadata from OpenAlex into bibliometrix structures. Using bibliometrix or biblioshiny requires R. Stable releases are distributed through CRAN, while a daily-updated GitHub beta may contain minor bugs. PubMed exports lack citation and reference-list metadata, preventing citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation links. Web of Science and Scopus service access requires a subscription.

Litmaps is a web-based research tool that uses citation networks and advanced search to help researchers find papers and conduct literature reviews. Its search catalogue contains more than 270 million papers. A Litmap visualizes connections among articles through citations and references; users can annotate papers and change how the map is arranged. Topic monitoring sends automatic emails when new articles appear, and maps can be shared as images, public links, or with selected email addresses. The free plan costs nothing and includes basic search, up to 20 inputs and 100 articles, one Litmap, and a monthly summary, but no collaboration. Pro (Education) costs $10 a month, billed $120 / year - save 20%; it adds advanced search, unlimited inputs, articles, and Litmaps, plus daily or configurable alerts, and requires an academic email address. Litmaps Pro syncs Zotero collections with Litmaps Tags in both directions. Articles can also be imported from BibTeX, RIS, or PubMed files and exported in BibTeX, RIS, or CSV formats. Open Access PDFs are available to all users; other PDF access requires institutional access through LibKey.