The citation map that lives in your Zotero library.

OrbLit syncs directly with Zotero, finds thematic clusters in your literature, and surfaces related papers your citations alone would never show you. Free to use, and open source.

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Everything orbits the paper you're reading

Search OpenAlex

Find any paper across OpenAlex's full catalog and pull it straight onto your map.

Visualize the network

Citations and references become a network of knowledge ready to explore - drag, expand, and zoom to see how work connects.

Sync with Zotero

Connect your library once, then keep it in sync with one click - new papers, DOI matches, and additions get pulled in.

Tag & organize

Color-code papers by theme, track discovery vs. your collection, and never lose the thread.

See it in action

Visualize the citation networkCitations and references become an interactive map — filled nodes are papers already in your collection, outlined nodes are discoveries found around it. Drag, expand, and zoom to see how the literature connects.

Every paper in one searchable listSort by year or citation count, filter by tag or collection scope, and jump straight back to the map to see any paper in context.

Thematic clustersOrbLit embeds each paper's title and abstract and clusters them automatically — see how your reading actually groups by topic, not just by citation links.

Suggested related papersFind papers that are thematically close to your collection but were never cited by or citing anything you already have — shown as squares so they're easy to tell apart from your existing collection.

Zotero import & syncConnect your library once, build a map from any collection, and add anything you find straight back to Zotero — PDF included, no manual export/import.