Read the literature, turn the gap into evidence.
Lacuna reads a field's literature through three engines and turns the gap left between clusters into a defensible research question. The application runs at lacunamind.app; this page is the product's institutional registry.
- analysis engines
- 3
- clustering
- Leiden
- languages
- 10
Why is a research gap hard to find?
Seeing what a field has studied is not hard; what is hard is seeing where nobody has stopped. A gap is not a record but the distance between records.
Telling a reviewer "this has not been studied" is not enough; you need to show what you left out and why.
In practice this work is split across three separate tools, and the three outputs get connected by hand; that connection is recorded nowhere.
Three engines in one workflow
Lacuna runs the same corpus through three readings and keeps them in one study; one engine uses another's output as input.
Bibliometric network analysis
Co citation and co word networks are built, and clusters are split with the Leiden algorithm; the picture shows which clusters never touch.
Thematic strategic mapping
Clusters are placed on axes of density and centrality; the map shows whether a theme has matured, is rising, or stayed on the margin.
Meta forest
Studies carrying numerical findings are brought together and their effect sizes compared on a common scale.
You bring the corpus; Lacuna does not impose its own data subscription. The interface works in ten languages.
The output of the three readings comes together in one editable draft; nobody carries findings over by hand when moving to writing.
Decision log and a sealed method
A literature review is made up of hundreds of small decisions that usually stay in the researcher's head; six months later nobody remembers them.
The decision log records each one with its reason; when a reviewer asks what you ruled out and why, the answer is in the report.
When the analysis closes, the method is sealed: thresholds, clustering settings and filters are frozen, and the same corpus gives the same result.
Who is it for?
Lacuna is field agnostic; the analysis is built on whatever field the corpus comes from. What they share is not the field but the shape of the question: a large literature, and where to look inside it.
- A doctoral student trying to narrow down a thesis topic
- A research team running a systematic review or meta analysis
- An academic who needs to show the state of a field before a grant application
- A research centre or library asked to map out a field
All four share the same expectation: being able to explain afterwards how the result was reached.
Institutional use
We provide institutional licences, pilot deployments and training support for universities, research centres and libraries.
Related guides
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