What is a citation graph?

A citation graph is a network in which each paper is a node and each citation is a directed link from the citing paper to the cited one. Reading it shows a field’s foundations (heavily cited nodes), its sub-topics (clusters) and the papers that bridge them. Related measures such as co-citation and bibliographic coupling are computed from it.

Large citation graphs are built from databases such as Crossref, OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar.

A personal graph of the papers you have read is smaller but tells you about your own coverage and blind spots.