Alterlab Citation Graph

Citation Graph — Free ResearchRabbit Analog

Overview

A free, account-free, key-less alternative to ResearchRabbit and Connected Papers. Given a seed DOI (or several seeds), this skill walks the OpenAlex citation network outward in both directions and assembles a citation / co-citation graph of the local literature:

• Backward edges — the works each seed cites (its referenced_works).
• Forward edges — the works that cite each seed (its cited_by set).

It then ranks the discovered neighbourhood by co-citation strength — how many of the seed papers a candidate work connects to, via shared references, shared citers, and direct seed links — surfacing the papers most central to the topic, just like ResearchRabbit's "Similar Work" panels. The whole graph is exported as GraphML (open in Gephi, Cytoscape, yEd, or networkx) and JSON (for downstream code).

OpenAlex is fully open and requires no API key. The only etiquette is the polite pool: pass a contact email (--mailto or OPENALEX_MAILTO) and OpenAlex serves you faster.

When to Use This Skill

• Map a literature landscape from a starting paper — "I have one key paper, show me the field around it."
• Find seminal / highly co-cited papers in an area without manually chasing references.
• Snowball a reference network (forward and backward citation chasing) for a review.
• Build a citation map or run a co-citation analysis for a methods/visualization figure.
• Visualize how a research area connects — export to Gephi/Cytoscape for a network figure.

This is the graph-building / discovery tool. It is not a backend router for free-text research queries (that is alterlab-research-lookup) and not a citation/metadata fact-checker (that is alterlab-citation-verifier).

Quick Start

# One seed DOI, default 1-hop walk, write both formats next to a basename:
uv run python scripts/build_graph.py \
    --seed 10.1038/nphys1170 \
    --mailto alterlab.ieu@gmail.com \
    --out graph/seed1
# -> graph/seed1.graphml  +  graph/seed1.json

# Several seeds (DOI / OpenAlex W-id / arXiv id), deeper walk, larger ranking:
uv run python scripts/build_graph.py \
    --seed 10.1038/nphys1170 \
    --seed W2741809807 \
    --seed arXiv:2310.06825 \
    --depth 2 --per-seed 50 --top 40 \
    --mailto alterlab.ieu@gmail.com \
    --out graph/transformer

# Offline smoke test (no network) — verifies the pipeline end-to-end:
uv run python scripts/build_graph.py --self-test

How It Works

1. Resolve seeds. Each --seed is normalized to an OpenAlex selector. Accepted forms: a bare DOI (10.1038/nphys1170), a DOI URL, an OpenAlex work id (W2741809807), an OpenAlex URL, or an arXiv id (arXiv:1706.03762 / 1706.03762).
2. Expand backward. From each seed's referenced_works, add seed -> reference edges.
3. Expand forward. Query filter=cites:<id> to find works that cite the seed, adding citer -> seed edges (capped at --per-seed, OpenAlex max 200).
4. Walk deeper. With --depth N, repeat the expansion on first-hop neighbours (N >= 2).
5. Rank by co-citation. Each non-seed node is scored by shared_refs + shared_citers + direct_seed_links — bibliographic coupling and co-citation against the seed set — with global cited_by_count as the tie-breaker so canonical works float to the top.
6. Export. Write <out>.graphml and <out>.json.

Options

Output

GraphML (<out>.graphml) — a directed graph with node attributes title, year, doi, role (seed / reference / citation / neighbor), and cited_by_count. Open it directly in Gephi, Cytoscape, yEd, or networkx.read_graphml.

JSON (<out>.json) — schema alterlab-citation-graph/1.0:

{
  "schema": "alterlab-citation-graph/1.0",
  "seeds": ["10.1038/nphys1170"],
  "node_count": 142,
  "edge_count": 318,
  "nodes": [ { "id": "W…", "title": "…", "year": 2017, "doi": "…", "role": "citation", "cited_by_count": 8123 } ],
  "edges": [ { "source": "W…", "target": "W…" } ],
  "cocitation_ranking": [
    { "id": "W…", "title": "…", "cocitation": 4, "shared_refs": 2,
      "shared_citers": 1, "direct_seed_links": 1, "cited_by_count": 8123 }
  ]
}

Etiquette & Limits

• No API key. OpenAlex is open; do not invent or request one.
• Be polite. Always pass --mailto / set OPENALEX_MAILTO to use the faster polite pool.
• Bound the walk. --depth 2 with a large --per-seed can fan out fast; raise --sleep to throttle and keep --per-seed reasonable on shared networks.
• Coverage caveat. OpenAlex citation coverage is broad but imperfect; very new preprints may have sparse cited_by sets.
• arXiv seeds. An arXiv:<id> seed is resolved via its DataCite DOI (10.48550/arXiv.<id>). If a preprint was later merged into its published-version record, OpenAlex may carry only the publisher DOI — pass that DOI as the seed instead.

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