Quickstart

gitgap is a gap detection pipeline — it surfaces explicitly declared research gaps from peer-reviewed literature and tracks every attempt to resolve them. NAUGHT → CAUGHT → FOUND.

What is a research gap?

Every paper ends with a discussion section. Inside that section, authors declare what they couldn't address, what the field still doesn't know, what the next study needs to do. Those declarations are gaps. They are written, published, and then lost — no system tracks them. gitgap indexes exactly those declarations and maintains a lifecycle for each one.

Four steps to using gitgap

1

Search the gap index

Go to Gaps and search by gateway term — the primary disciplinary keyword for the gap (e.g., Morton encoding, Hubble tension, predictive policing). Filter by discipline, confidence, or keeper verdict. 

GET /gaps/search?q=Morton+encoding&limit=10
2

Read a gap declaration

Click any gap to see the full extracted declaration, the source paper, the gateway term, bridge potential (cross-discipline score), and the current lifecycle state. CAUGHT gaps show the active resolution attempt. FOUND gaps show which paper closed them.

3

Explore the 3D Globe

Open the Globe to see the full gap corpus as a 3D visualization. Each spike is a gap. Spike height = confidence. Ring = CAUGHT (in-progress). Gold ring = FOUND (resolved). The globe is filterable by discipline and lifecycle state.

4

Use the API

Fetch gaps for your research workflow:

# Search by keyword
GET /gaps/search?q=spatial+indexing&min_score=0.6

# Get structural holes (cross-discipline bridges)
GET /gaps/structural-holes?source=computer_science&target=criminal_justice

# Get a specific gap
GET /gaps/42

# Pin a new gap (API key required)
POST /gaps/pin
{
  "declaration_text": "No study has examined...",
  "gateway_term": "your-term",
  "paper_pmcid": "PMC0000000"
}

Full interactive docs at /api/docs.

For journal editors

If your journal publishes peer-reviewed work, your papers are likely declaring gaps that gitgap doesn't know about yet. See Journals We Aggregate to check coverage, or Submit Your Journal to request aggregation.

NAUGHT → CAUGHT → FOUND
NAUGHT = declared, unaddressed. CAUGHT = a paper is attempting it. FOUND = gap closed. REJECTED = attempt failed — the trail and pickup instructions are preserved. Every state is tracked. Nothing is discarded.