Would you use a web application that created a visual literature map from a seeded article?

[dmaurath]

I am a graduate student in I/O Psychology and have been learning to program for almost a year now. I need a new project. I thought it might be cool to build a site where you could paste a link to an article (PDF or HTML) and be provided with a literature map tree of all articles cited in the seed article and all articles cited in those articles, etc. 

 

The output would look like this but instead of "flare" or "analytics", it would have article titles and abstracts. The article titles would link to the original articles and perhaps have other features related to citations, keyword searches etc. 

 

So you could find an article on a topic of interest and then let the app generate the complete "nomological network" with a click of a button  Its a bit out there and cannot say I know how to do it yet, but perhaps its a useful pursuit?  

[zabius]

I think this would be really useful, especially for when I'm gathering sources to write a paper. Some publications can have a huge number of references, though... wouldn't the output tree get crowded very quickly?

[Monochrome Spring]

I would use it, but what about articles that site back instead of always siting an article that you haven't seen sited before? Could you make the tree more interactive or highlight repeated sources?

[tlopiano2]

I would definitely use that app.

[biotechie]

I would use that type of application like crazy if it showed the pedigree of that particular paper as well... as in the papers that led up to it. If I could have that + Mendeley, it would be so much easier for me to find my data. I'm using to seeing, "As discussed previously" in papers and then having to spend hours tracing it back to find the source. You would have tons of people that love you forever for revolutionizing literature review.