There has been a proliferation of new research discovery tools that aid scientists in finding relevant publications. To obtain a general overview of this development, this article generates a conceptual typology of all possible research discovery tools by drawing from the information-theoretical concepts of redundancy/variety. Bibliometric links between scholarly publications can thus exhibit ‘redundancy’ (i.e. expectable linkages between academic works) or ‘variety’ (i.e. original co-occurrence patterns). On the redundancy-reproducing end of the typology are machines that harness extant co-citations or keyword queries, such as academic search engines and paper recommender systems. The variety end of the spectrum harbours services that enable categorial browsing or that suggest publications randomly, such as journals’ tables of contents or random paper bots. The typology has implications for understanding how the design of research discovery platforms may ultimately shape aggregate citational networks of science.

有大量新的研究发现工具可以帮助科学家找到相关的出版物。为了获得对这一发展的总体概述，本文从冗余/多样性的信息理论概念中提取所有可能的研究发现工具的概念类型。因此，学术出版物之间的文献计量联系可以表现出“冗余”（即学术作品之间可预期的联系）或“多样性”（即原始的共现模式）。在类型学的冗余复制端是利用现有的共引或关键字查询的机器，例如学术搜索引擎和论文推荐系统。频谱的多样性端包含支持分类浏览或随机推荐出版物的服务，例如期刊的目录或随机纸机器人。类型学对于理解研究发现平台的设计如何最终塑造科学的综合引用网络具有重要意义。