A reference manager gives you a list. Rows of papers, sortable by author or year, each one an island. But that's not what your research is. Your research is a web — this paper props up that argument, those three sources all say the same thing, this document and that one quietly lean on the same study. The connections are the work. The list hides them.
Folio now shows you the web directly.
The map you've been missing
Open Graph in the top navigation and your library reorganizes itself into a live map. Every source is a node. Every document you've written is a node. Wherever a document cites a source, a line connects them. What was a spreadsheet becomes a shape.
It's built to be moved through, not just looked at:
- Click any node and a panel slides in with the full picture — citation, abstract, metadata, tags, reading status — so you can identify a paper without losing your place on the map.
- Read without leaving. Open a source's reader right there in the graph view. No new tab, no bouncing back to the library.
- Search to teleport. Type a title and jump straight to its node. The map fits itself to your screen when it loads, then eases into place with a short cascade so you can watch the structure assemble.
- Walk the connections. Each node lists its neighbors, so you can step from a paper to the documents that rely on it, and on to the other sources those documents share.
If you've ever used a tool like Obsidian for notes, the feeling is familiar — except these links aren't ones you drew by hand. Folio reads them out of your actual citations. The graph is a byproduct of doing the work, not another thing to maintain.
Read it backwards: "Cited in"
The graph has a quieter companion that lives in your library. Open any source and you'll now see Cited in — the list of your own documents that cite it, each a click away.
It's the citation relationship reversed. A bibliography answers "what does this document cite?" Cited in answers the question you actually have when you're deciding a source's fate: "where am I leaning on this, and how much?" A paper cited in five of your drafts is load-bearing. A paper cited in none is a candidate for the cut — or a reminder that you read something promising and never used it.
What the shape tells you
A map is useful because it shows you things a list can't:
- Clusters. A tight knot of sources that all connect to one section is the literature of a sub-argument. Seeing it whole tells you whether it's well-supported or thin.
- Orphans. Nodes floating off on their own are sources you imported and forgot. Either they belong somewhere, or they don't belong at all.
- Over-reliance. When one paper sits at the center of everything, with lines radiating to half your documents, that's worth noticing before a reviewer does.
- The spine. Trace the sources that connect to the most documents and you've found the backbone of your thinking — the handful of papers your whole body of work rests on.
None of this is new information. It was always there, encoded in your citations. You just couldn't see it until it had a shape.
Try it
If you've cited even a few sources across a couple of documents, the graph already has something to show you. Open Graph from the top nav and have a look at the shape of your own research.
Folio is a research workspace built around integrity — real sources, verified citations, and now a map of how they all fit together. Start for free.