Written by Mette Bechmann
The “Snowballing” technique in literature research is about using a key paper as a stepping stone to finding other relevant papers based on works cited in the original paper and works citing that paper. Bibliographic databases such as Web of Science and Scopus are classic go-to resources for this kind of exploration of the academic literature.
In addition to these tools, you may also want to check out the discovery software ConnectedPapers. On the basis of a so-called seed paper (key paper), ConnectedPapers will build a visual representation. The papers are connected by co-citations and bibliographic coupling. This means that not only papers that are connected because they cite each other become visible, but ConnectedPapers also make visible papers that share references and citations, which could imply that they are discussing the same subject matters.
On the basis of the seed paper, the software will present the 40 papers that are closest. The more citations, the bigger the node in the visualization pane. A darker hue denotes a more recent paper. Distance from the seed paper is an expression of degree of similarity.
Source: https://www.connectedpapers.com
Although the visualization is the most prominent feature in ConnectedPapers, it is in fact just the icing on the cake. The button “Prior works” will lead you to the papers that are most commonly shared by the papers in the graph, i.e. to potentially seminal works in the field. “Derivative works” will display papers that contain a lot of the papers from the graph in their bibliographies. These would be papers that aim to present an overview of the field – either by providing a robust overview of the literature in the introductory part or by presenting a full literature review.
ConnectedPapers cannot replace classic keyword searching and citation exploration, but it is a great supplement.