Litmaps as a tool for scientific literature mapping

citation network protocol, thematic saturation and transparency measures

Abstract

This article presents a methodological protocol for scientific literature mapping using Litmaps, a platform that combines citation network tracking with textual similarity recommendations. The protocol proposes an operational stopping rule based on thematic saturation, adapting established principles from qualitative research to bibliometric corpus construction. The central objective is to make explicit the decisions and steps that allow replication and auditing, recognizing the inherent limitations of using tools with proprietary algorithms. For demonstration, the protocol was applied to an empirical topic (unmanned aerial vehicles researches in coastal environments, conducted between 2013 and 2024), used exclusively as an illustrative case. The resulting corpus contains 58 publications, whose metadata were deposited in a public repository. The text discusses methodological risks associated with algorithmic opacity, citation connectivity bias, and citation accumulation delay, proposing mitigation measures. The main contribution lies in the formalization of a replicable roadmap that allows other researchers to use Litmaps with adequate documentation of methodological choices.