· Resource · 2 min read
Who do you know that I know?
A small tool to find shared collaborators between any two researchers; useful for finding warm introductions, vetting speakers, or just satisfying scientific curiosity.
Science runs on connections. The graph above is our own co-authorship network, each node an author, each edge a shared paper, thickness proportional to how many. It is a small world, and it turns out you can navigate it.
The problem
Picture this: you want to invite someone to give a talk at your symposium, but you have never met them. A cold email works, but a warm introduction is so much better. The question is: does anyone in your network know them?
This used to mean scrolling through PubMed, squinting at author lists, and hoping your memory holds. Now you can just look it up. This is why we made the tool.
The tool
It searches OpenAlex, an open index of essentially all scientific literature, and compares the co-author lists of any two researchers. Type two names, wait a few seconds while it scans up to 1,000 papers per person, and it tells you who they have both published with.
A few use cases
Inviting a speaker. You want to invite a leading glycobiologist from another institution. Plug in your name and theirs: turns out you share two collaborators, one of whom you see every year at a meeting. That is your introduction.
Checking a reviewer suggestion. Before suggesting someone as a reviewer, it is worth knowing whether they are deeply embedded in the same clique as the authors. A quick check tells you whether they have seven shared co-authors or none.
Exploring a new field. Moving into a neighbouring area and wondering who bridges the two communities? Search yourself against a prominent figure in that field and you will quickly see whose work you should be paying attention to.
Just being nosy. Science is a small world. Sometimes it is simply fun to discover that two people you think of as completely separate both published with the same person in 1997.
How it works
The code fetches the works for each author page by page and builds a co-author map on the spot. Then it finds the intersection. Nothing clever, just a bit of API patience. The data comes entirely from OpenAlex, which is free and open, so no API key or login needed.
The source lives on this site. If something breaks or you want a feature, feel free to reach out.
