Introducing VOL 1.0: explore research knowledge on a map

Today we are launching VOL 1.0, a semantic exploration platform for research knowledge. VOL lays out large corpora, such as scientific papers, CORDIS projects, patents and clinical trials, as an interactive 3D map where related documents cluster together.

Why a map?

Lists are great when you already know what you are looking for. Research rarely works that way. A map shows you the shape of a field: the dense clusters, the bridges between them and the white space nobody has explored yet.

Answers you can verify

VOL AI answers questions only from the corpus you choose. Every claim carries a citation, and every citation is a node on the map. Click it and the camera flies to that document and its cluster, so you always see the context around an answer.

We wanted an assistant that makes you read more sources, not fewer.

Built for developers too

Everything in VOL is available through:

• a public REST API with API-key authentication,
• a typed TypeScript SDK (@vol/sdk),
• React components for the graph and the chat (@vol/atoms),
• and a one-line script embed (@vol/embed).

import { VolClient } from "@vol/sdk";

const vol = new VolClient({ apiKey: process.env.VOL_API_KEY });
const { answer, citations } = await vol.chat({ case: "papers", question: "What is RAPTOR?" });

What’s next

Patents and clinical trials maps are rolling out over the coming weeks, along with shared workspaces and workflows. We can’t wait to see what you discover.