ResearchRabbit

ResearchRabbit is a literature discovery tool. Researchers use it to explore how papers and authors connect to each other. A user starts from one or more seed papers, and the tool maps related, earlier, and later work as an interactive graph covering roughly 270 million papers. Users can switch the view to show authors instead of papers, then see an author's full output and collaborators. The tool connects to a user's existing Zotero library instead of requiring a separate one, and collections can be shared through a link so a colleague can view them without an account. The core discovery features are free for individual use.

This fits any research or innovation team on a tight budget, since the core tool is free and a whole team can try it before buying anything else. A good starting point is loading a handful of known key papers as seeds and exploring outward. Individuals who want a higher seed limit and extra filters can add ResearchRabbit+ for about 10 dollars a month, billed yearly. One risk is that a free tool like this can change pricing with little warning, since there is no clear long-term business model behind it. Coverage also depends on the Semantic Scholar database, so very recent or niche papers may be thin. Treat it as a discovery layer on top of your team's main reference manager, not a replacement for one.