Research literature exploration

Map scientific literature with a word cloud

A word cloud from 146 PLOS ONE abstracts offers an entry point to vocabulary in recent microplastics research.

Create a word cloud See all examples

Word cloud of microplastics research abstracts with prominent terms including plastic, study, microplastics, water and pollution — Click the cloud to view the full image.

The source

146 scientific abstracts, published 2020 to 2025

A selected CC BY corpus of PLOS ONE abstracts with a DOI and PMC ID. Corrections and retractions were excluded.

PLOS ONE abstracts via Europe PMC

How we made it

We analysed the abstract text with standard English stop words, frequency scoring, and single-word terms. The cloud displays the 60 most frequent remaining terms.

Sources and preparation notes

Read it carefully

This illustrative corpus is not a systematic review. Word frequency is not evidence of scientific importance, quality, consensus, or risk.

What this cloud can show

The corpus includes environmental, marine, health and methods vocabulary, offering leads for a closer literature search.
Terms such as water, pollution, species, exposure and soil help show the breadth of the selected abstracts.
A cloud can make it easier to decide which concepts, synonyms and subject areas to investigate in detail.

Try this with your own text

1Create separate clouds by year, organism, environment or study design.
2Add common academic terms such as study, results and analysis to Stop Words for a more topic-focused comparison.
3Read the underlying abstracts and citations before making any scientific claim.

Start with a question, then read the text.

Use a cloud to find patterns worth investigating, then inspect the underlying comments or papers.

Create a word cloud