How BiblioPraxis Search Works

A clear guide to understanding search credits and how to tune your research for the best results.

What is a Search Credit?

Think of a search credit as a single, targeted 'look' into the vast world of academic literature. Each credit authorizes BiblioPraxis to perform one search operation against a scholarly database, retrieving and analyzing a batch of approximately 20 of the most relevant papers for a specific query.

By controlling the number of credits you use, you control the scale of your literature search.

The Two Levers of Your Search

When you start a new project, you have two parameters to control how your credits are spent. Mastering these will help you go from a broad idea to a focused set of papers.

1. Search Breadth

(Number of Search Queries)

This setting controls how many different angles of your topic are explored. It's about casting a wide net.

Example:

If your topic is "AI's impact on climate change," a breadth of 3 might cause our AI to intelligently generate and run searches for distinct sub-topics like:

  • "AI applications in carbon capture"
  • "Machine learning for climate change modeling"
  • "Predictive analytics for extreme weather events"

2. Search Depth

(Search Depth per Query)

This setting controls how far down the list of results we go for each search. It's about digging deep for each angle.

Example:

For any single search query, a depth of:

  • 1 analyzes the top ~20 papers (great for specific topics).
  • 2 analyzes the top ~40 papers.
  • 3 analyzes the top ~60 papers (useful for very active fields).

Putting It All Together

The total cost of your review is a simple multiplication:

Total Credits = (Search Breadth) × (Search Depth)

For the example above, a Breadth of 3 and a Depth of 2 would result in 3 × 2 = 6 credits being used.

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