Follow a research trail
Can one paper lead you to a question you had not thought to ask?
20-35 minutes
Start with these sources
Your first move: Search urban heat islands in OpenAlex and select a relevant starting work.
Without AI
- Follow one reference backward and one citing work forward; save each title, year, and identifier.
- Read the available abstracts or citation passages and label what each connection actually establishes.
- Draw the three-stop trail and add a question that changed as you moved between the works.
With GenAI
Bring your own AI tool and the source material. This atlas does not send your data anywhere or run an AI model.
- Supply the three records and the passages you can read, keeping reference links and citation direction explicit.
- Ask AI to propose a plain-language map legend and identify places where the relationship is still unknown.
- Check the identifiers and arrows yourself, and replace any invented agreement or influence with a narrower label.
A prompt to make your own
Make a three-stop citation-trail outline from the records and excerpts I supply. Keep backward references and later citing works distinct. Cite each supplied DOI, OpenAlex ID, or source URL. Describe agreement, criticism, or use only when a supplied passage supports it; otherwise label the relationship as citation only. Mark missing abstracts or dates. Never fabricate numbers, quotations, references, or author relationships. End with one question to explore next. Records, links, and excerpts: [Paste here.]
Make something: A three-node citation map with a sentence explaining each checked connection.
Keep your footing
- A citation can criticize, compare, or provide background.
- Check that similarly named authors are the same people before connecting their careers.
- An absent citation link may reflect incomplete indexing.
Why follow this question?
Why this is interesting
A research field can feel like a wall of titles until one paper becomes a doorway. Following a small number of connections keeps the trail readable. The map is not a complete history of discovery; it is a record of the path you explored and the evidence you found there.
OpenAlex provides the catalog connections. Your reading supplies their meaning. Keep a “citation only” label available so that an arrow never claims more than you checked.
Follow another thread
If the trail reaches health research, look up the publication in PubMed and compare the record, publication type, and notices. For another direction, search a concept from an older paper in a patent portal. Research and invention can meet in unexpected places, but a shared phrase alone does not establish a historical influence.
Go a little further
Follow one branch outside the starting discipline and give the trail a new title.
Worked examples: Why do wombats poop cubes?