LitSense: Supporting Academic Literature Review Workflows


  • Performed research in the Dynamic Graphics Project lab at the University of Toronto, to develop and evaluate a web application that assists researchers in the literature review workflow 
  • Conducted formative interviews to gather information about academics current methods of performing bibliography searches and literature reviews 
  • Developed LitSense, an end-to-end tool to support literature review workflows from paper discovery to synthesis. Unlike existing reference management tools that maintain "collections" of papers, LitSense is designed to focus on a particular research question, a distinction
    relevant to cases where a paper contributes different perspectives to various literature reviews and mental models.
  • Conducted holistic and ecologically valid assessment of literature review workflows. Our investigations followed a user centered approach and examined practices of 27 researchers, assessing current practices and how workflows fare under a more integrated approach to literature review with LitSense.

Publications


Understanding and Supporting Academic Literature Review Workflows with LitSense


N. Sultanum, Christine Murad, Daniel J. Wigdor

International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 2020