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One trusted paper is enough to find the literature around it. Three signals help: papers that look similar, papers that cite it, and papers it cites. This tutorial uses Cryan & Dinan (2012), Mind-altering microorganisms, on the gut microbiome and depression. You’ll learn how to:
  1. Find semantically similar papers from a single seed
  2. Build a research timeline from the collected set
  3. Generate a research gaps matrix showing what topics and populations are missing

Step 1: Find the seed and its neighbors

Research Agent locates the paper, searches on signals from its abstract and full text for semantically similar work, and walks the citation graph in both directions. From over a million candidates it deduplicates to 99 close matches and analyzes the top 20. Scroll the sidebar and click Show more for the full list.

Step 2: Visualize coverage and gaps

Consensus builds a timeline of when each paper was published relative to the seed, then a gaps matrix. In the example, only one paper covers human clinical trials of short-chain fatty acids and metabolites.

Step 3: Fill the gaps

Consensus runs a parallel search for each major gap, with a 5-year recency filter on every one.
Hover any paper and click the bookmark to save it to your Library as you go.

Save papers as you find them

Click the bookmark on any paper to save it, or the bookmark at the top of the page to save the whole thread. Pick an existing Collection or create a new one. Collections can be nested by choosing a parent under Create in.
A search result with the save-paper bookmark highlighted and the Collection picker open

The bookmark on a paper and at the top of the thread.

Review every paper the thread used

Click References in the top right. The dropdown switches between All cited papers (everything across the thread) and By message (papers behind one specific search). Tick papers here to save several at once or attach them to a follow-up.
The References panel with the All cited papers / By message dropdown open

Trace citations

Fill gaps in a Collection