About Citation Map

Who we are, why we built this, and exactly how a citation map is generated from public data.

Last updated: April 17, 2026

Who we are

Citation Map is built and maintained by Tom An, founder of Anureka Inc. Anureka is a small, independent software studio focused on tools for researchers, writers, and knowledge workers. Citation Map is one of those tools. It is run as a free public resource, not as a venture-backed growth product.

There is no anonymous “team” behind this site. If something on Citation Map is wrong, misleading, or broken, the person responsible is Tom, and the email below goes directly to him.

Why we built this

Researchers routinely need to demonstrate the geographic reach of their work — for tenure files, grant applications, O-1A and EB-1A visa petitions, and academic portfolios. The existing options were unsatisfying:

  • Proprietary databases (Web of Science, Scopus) are expensive and locked behind institutional subscriptions.
  • Open Python scripts on GitHub require installing dependencies, managing API keys, and producing static images.
  • General citation graph tools (e.g. Connected Papers) visualize paper similarity, not where in the world your work is being cited.

Citation Map exists to fill that specific gap: a web tool that takes a name or an author ID and returns an interactive world map of the institutions citing that author’s work, in seconds, with no sign-up and no payment.

Our data source

All citation data on Citation Map comes from Google Scholar — the world’s largest academic search index, covering papers across every discipline and updated continuously. We use Google Scholar because its coverage is broad, current, and freely searchable for any researcher in the world.

We do not resell Google Scholar data, and we do not add proprietary citation scores on top of it. What you see on a Citation Map profile page is a geographic view of the citing institutions Google Scholar reports for that author. If a citation is missing, it is almost always because Google Scholar has not yet indexed the citing work.

Methodology

The map on a researcher’s profile page is produced by the following deterministic steps:

  1. Resolve the author. We query the author catalog for the name or ID you entered and pick the matching author record (which carries a stable author ID such as A5012345678).
  2. Fetch the author’s works. For that author ID we fetch all indexed works via the underlying API, paginating until we have the full list of publications.
  3. Fetch citing works. For each work, we retrieve the list of other works that cite it. This gives us the raw citation edges.
  4. Extract citing institutions. Each citing work has author affiliations, and each affiliation is linked to an institution record with a country_code and, where available, geographic coordinates.
  5. Geocode where needed. For institutions without catalog coordinates, we resolve a lat/long via Google Maps Geocoding on the institution display name. Results are cached so each institution is only geocoded once.
  6. Aggregate by country. We sum citation counts at the country level to drive the choropleth map, and keep per-institution counts to drive point markers and tooltips.
  7. Render. The frontend renders the aggregated data with react-simple-maps and a D3 linear scale for marker sizing. Nothing about the map is hand-curated.

Because the pipeline is deterministic and based on public data, two people running the same query on the same day should get the same map. If the map looks wrong, it almost always reflects the underlying catalog record — missing affiliations, duplicate author entities, or unindexed citing works — rather than a transformation we applied.

What we stand for

  • Open data. Citation data on this site comes from an open academic catalog, and we attribute the source on the profile page.
  • No paywall. All core features — generating a map, embedding it, and exporting it — are free. There is no paid tier gating them.
  • Privacy-first. We do not require accounts to view a map. When accounts exist (for claiming a profile), we do not sell or share your data. See the privacy policy for details.
  • Proper attribution. Every profile page credits our upstream catalog as the data source.
  • A real person answers email. The contact address below is a human inbox, not a ticketing system.

Contact

The fastest way to reach us is email: wangcheng.an@anureka.com. Corrections, data issues on a specific profile, visa-attorney questions about using the map as evidence, and press inquiries all go to the same address.

If your question is general (“how do I create a map?”, “can I embed this?”), it is probably already answered in the FAQ.

Citation Map is operated by Anureka Inc. All upstream catalog data is used under its own terms of use. This page was last reviewed on April 17, 2026.