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This question is not directly a mathematical question, but I am interested in whether there exists a calculator akin to an Erdős number calculator. The main difference is that I am not interested in coauthorship, but in citation distance; that is, I would like to link papers or authors by a chain of papers $P_1 , \dots , P_n$ such that $P_i$ either cites or is cited by $P_{i+1}$.

Considering how useful such a tool could be for detecting connections between different areas of math, I assume that someone has done this before. Any help is appreciated!

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If you have access to the Web of Science you could use the CitNetExplorer tool to create a citation network (documentation). This tool is used quite extensively, but I have not used it myself.

The arXiv has recently implented the LitMaps tool to create a citation network. I don't think Google Scholar offers a similar functionality.

Incidentally, the average citation distance between papers published in the same year decreased from approximately 5.33 to 3.18 steps between 1950 and 2018 (source).

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  • $\begingroup$ I was just playing with the LitMaps tool, and this is pretty close to what I want. Do you know if it is able to find "links" between articles that do not cite each other directly? $\endgroup$
    – Rellek
    Commented Jul 4, 2021 at 16:16

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