A research landscape analysis shows the shape of a field from its publication record: how much is published, how fast it is growing, and who publishes where. AI for Research's Landscape does this for any topic, from OpenAlex, for students choosing a thesis topic, academics scoping a grant and analysts sizing a research area.
What you can do with it
- Size a field before you commit to it: total works and the peak year tell you whether a topic is crowded, growing or quiet.
- See the trend: works per year, from the first year with output to this year.
- Find the main subtopics and the share of works in each.
- Find where it is published: the leading journals and sources.
- Find who works on it: the most active authors and institutions, for reading lists, collaborators or examiners.
- Start reading from the top: the ten most-cited works, each one click from your Library.
- Compare two topics on one chart, such as two methods or two populations.
How it works, step by step
- Open Landscape and type a topic, such as "microplastics in drinking water".
- Add a second topic in Compare with, if you want two fields side by side. This is optional.
- Set a year range with From year and To year, if you want only part of the record.
- Press Map the field. The counts come from OpenAlex.
- Read the summary tiles: Works, Open access (the share of works with a free copy), Peak year, and Top journal (or, when you compare, the total for the second topic).
- Read the panels: Works per year, Main topics, Journals and sources, Most active authors, Most active institutions, and Most cited works.
- Save the papers you want from Most cited works with Save to Library. The landscape itself is saved in your History.
What the result contains
| Panel | What it shows | How many |
|---|---|---|
| Summary tiles | Total works, open-access share, peak year, top journal | 4 figures |
| Works per year | A column chart of output by year; both topics when you compare | Every year in range |
| Main topics | Subtopics by number of works, with each one's share of the total | Top 10 |
| Journals and sources | Journals, repositories and other sources by number of works | Top 10 |
| Most active authors | Authors by number of works on the topic | Top 10 |
| Most active institutions | Institutions by number of works on the topic | Top 10 |
| Most cited works | The works with the most citations, with authors, year, journal, study type and open access | 10 |
| Source line | "Source: OpenAlex, retrieved" with the date | 1 |
When the current year is in range, the chart notes that the year is not over, so a low last column is not read as a decline.
Example: choosing between two thesis topics
This is an example of how the comparison is used, not real counts.
A master's student is choosing between "microplastics in drinking water" and "microplastics in agricultural soil". She types the first as the topic and the second in Compare with, and sets From year to 2010. The works-per-year chart shows both curves together, and the tiles give each topic's total. She then runs the soil topic on its own to see its main subtopics, journals and leading institutions, saves three of its most-cited works to her Library, and takes the two landscapes to her supervisor as a reason for her choice. Credits used: none.
What it costs
| Free | Plus | Pro | Team | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landscape | 0 credits | 0 credits | 0 credits | 0 credits |
| Saved to History | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Move into a project | 1 project | 10 projects | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Landscape is free on every plan. Requests share a fair-use limit of 300 an hour. The AI jobs you run next, such as a Deep Research report on the field (15 credits) or a gap analysis in the Thesis Suite (3 credits), are charged as usual. See pricing.
What it does not do
- It counts by search words. A landscape includes the works in OpenAlex that match your words, so a broad or ambiguous term gathers unrelated work and a narrow one misses synonyms. Try a few phrasings and compare the totals.
- It does not open the records behind each count. Bars and ranked lists show numbers only. The ten most-cited works are the only records listed; to read more of the field, run Deep Research or follow citations in the Citation Map.
- It has no export. Copy the figures you need, and cite OpenAlex with the retrieval date shown.
- The comparison is partial. A second topic adds its works-per-year curve and total; the other panels describe the main topic only.
- It is not full bibliometrics. There are no co-authorship or co-citation networks, no citation indicators such as the h-index, and no field normalization.
- Its labels are OpenAlex's. Topics are assigned by OpenAlex's classifier, and author and institution names follow its disambiguation, which is not perfect for common names.
Who uses it
- Academics scoping a grant or a new research line: see AI for professors.
- PhD candidates writing the background of a proposal or a thesis introduction: see AI tools for PhD students.
- Analysts and R&D teams sizing a research area or watching a competitor's field: see AI for market research.
A research landscape analysis works well as the first step: map the field here, read its key papers with Deep Research, follow their references in the Citation Map, and keep it all in a project.
Learn more
- How to write a research question
- How to write a literature review
- Study types and levels of evidence
Last updated 2026-11-12