Litmaps vs Synthesis
Litmaps
litmaps.comSynthesis
synthesis.infoSide by side
| Figure | Litmaps | Synthesis |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $10/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 0 |
| Spec score · Literature Review Software | 7.9 (#12) | 7.5 (#22) |
| Company | Litmaps is operated by Litmap Limited, a New Zealand company with its registered office in Wellington. | Synthesis Research Inc. describes itself as a software development company focused on literature management and analysis. |
| Exports | Articles can be exported in BibTeX, RIS, or CSV formats. | References can be exported as RIS for use in citation managers such as EndNote or RefWorks, and displayed data can be exported as CSV. |
| Headquarters | Wellington, New Zealand | The maker says Synthesis Research Inc. is located in Calgary, Canada. |
| PDF access | Open Access article PDFs are available to all users, while access to other PDFs requires connecting institutional access through LibKey. | Synthesis can download many full-text PDFs when open access or institutional access is available. |
| Purpose | Litmaps uses citation networks and advanced search to help researchers find important papers and conduct literature reviews. | Synthesis is software for conducting scoping, systematic, and regular literature reviews. |
| Support | The Help Center offers user guides, research help, and one-on-one help through its contact option. | The support page offers an online reference manual, a help sheet, and YouTube tutorials. |
Plans
Litmaps
- Pro$10 a month
- Pro$120 a year
- FreeFree
- Pro (Education)$10 a month
- TeamPriced on request
In their own words
Litmaps
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.
Synthesis
Synthesis is software for conducting scoping, systematic and regular literature reviews. It organizes references and PDFs, searches abstracts and full-text PDFs by keyword or phrase, and automatically de-duplicates imported references. The support page reports externally validated deduplication sensitivity of 98% and specificity of 99%. Its screening workflow supports primary and secondary reviewers working through abstracts and full text, with kappa scores calculated for both. Analysis tools include AI-assisted topic clustering, word clouds, metadata extraction and charts. Embedded searches cover PubMed, PubMed Central, IEEE, arXiv.org and US Patents; references can also be imported from Ovid, Web of Knowledge, ProQuest and ACM. Synthesis can download many full-text PDFs when open or institutional access is available, and exports references and data as RIS and CSV. The trial allows unlimited projects, but each project can import only 50 references and uses a slower PDF viewer. The maker says orders and downloads are temporarily suspended during development of a new release. Licenses are tied to individual computers; pricing is available on request.