Literature Explorer
Type a topic, and Literature Explorer searches OpenAlex, an open index of scholarly works. It shows what it found with the keywords that matched, the topics that recur, and links to the article, its DOI and any free full text. Use it to start a literature search, then read and judge each work yourself.
Searching tips
- Use key concepts, not whole sentences.
- Put exact phrases in quotation marks.
- Join synonyms with OR, such as student OR undergraduate.
- Exclude a word with NOT.
Results
Search to see results
What should I do next?
You found literature. Now organise it.
- New
Literature Matrix Builder
Organise, compare and synthesise the studies in your literature review, and see the repeated methods, variables and gaps across them.
Reference Checker
Checks reference lists and citations in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, IEEE and Harvard for structure, missing details, duplicates, order and mismatched citations.
How to write a literature review
What a literature review is for, the main types of review, how to search for and record sources, how to synthesise rather than summarise, how to find genuine gaps, and how to structure and write the review.
How to use it
- Type your topic as a few key words or phrases. Put a phrase in quotation marks, such as “peer feedback”, and join alternatives with OR.
- Narrow by year, open access or type of work if you have too many results. Widen by removing a filter or a word if you have too few.
- Read the topic groups and suggested keywords. They show other words authors use for your idea, which you can search next.
- Open an article or its DOI to read it. Copy its APA 7 reference or BibTeX to start your reading list, and paste BibTeX into the Literature Matrix Builder's import box to compare studies.
- Search again with different words. Searching is repeated: keep a note of each search, the filters and the date.
How results are chosen and ordered
- Search: your words are matched against the title, abstract and keywords of each work in OpenAlex. Words without OR are all required; stemming means “writing” also finds “writings”.
- Order: each work scores points for your words in its title (3), abstract (1) and OpenAlex keywords or topics (2), and for each quoted phrase in the title (6) or abstract (3). The total is shown as a percentage of the most a work could score for your search. Equal scores keep OpenAlex's own order. This is a guide to relevance, not to quality.
- Duplicates: works with the same DOI, or the same title with the same year or first author, are combined. Works that only look alike are kept apart.
- Keywords: “OpenAlex keywords” and “topics” are assigned automatically by OpenAlex. They aren't the keywords the authors chose. “Words ResearchKit found” are words that recur in the titles and abstracts shown.
- Topic groups: ResearchKit groups the results using the topics and keywords that several works share. The groups depend on this set of results and change with your search.
What this tool can't do
- OpenAlex doesn't cover every work, and its metadata is collected automatically, so some records have missing or wrong details. Check each reference against the article before you cite it.
- Author names come as one text. ResearchKit splits them into family and given names by rule, so check them, especially names with several parts.
- It shows up to 50 works per search, and only the ones best matching your words. It isn't a systematic search and can't replace searching your library's databases.
- It can't say whether a work is peer reviewed, good, or right for your question. A free full-text link means OpenAlex found an open copy, not that it is the final published version.
- Retracted works are flagged when OpenAlex knows about it. Not every retraction is known.
- Your results are kept on this page only. Reload or leave, and they are gone. Copy what you need.
Privacy
Your search words and filters are sent to ResearchKit's server, which passes them to OpenAlex to find results. ResearchKit doesn't store or log them. OpenAlex and the host that runs ResearchKit may keep their own records under their own policies. The results stay in your browser and nothing is saved. Don't enter anything you wouldn't want to send to those services.