Each bright star is one of my studies. Each faint one is a paper that a study cites. Studies that cite the same papers get pulled together, so the clumps you see are the ones that really do share a literature. Hover a star to see what that study is about; click it for the full entry.
Where I file each study. The constellations are real ones (Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Orion, Lyra, Corvus, Crux), and the grey points are the places still open in each cell.
I took the reference list of every piece of work I have finished: 13 of them, citing 752 different papers between them. I matched the lists against each other, so a paper cited by two studies becomes one star rather than two. Then a physics simulation runs on it: every study pulls on the papers it cites, and every star pushes its neighbours away. Left to settle, studies that share references drift together and studies that share none drift apart.
Only 32 of those 752 papers are cited by more than one study, which is why most stars sit in a single halo. Those 32 are the pale gold ones, and a line is drawn between two studies wherever they share a reference, and the more they share the heavier the line.
The proportion is the part worth standing back for. A working life of research is a small, well-lit patch of somebody else’s field. Every study is also listed in plain words on the research page.