Literature Maps

Academics write 'literature reviews', and talk about 'logical space'. I wonder if there's any way to literally map out the existing literature, with nodes and connections, to provide an explicit representation of our communal knowledge? Two kinds of map would be especially valuable: one displaying the chronological unfolding of the literature, in terms of which papers are responding to which other papers (this should be relatively easy to construct); the other would look deeper and attempt to map logical space itself, and the way various arguments and positions are related, regardless of who put them forward or when (though this data should also be included, as a reference aid).

It would be a Herculean task, and no individual philosopher is in a position to codify the sum knowledge of the entire academic community. But it seems susceptible to chunking, and thus possible to construct gradually through wiki-style peer production. (Any Ph.D. could convert the 'literature review' from their dissertation, and authors could fill in the details for their own papers as they are published.)

It's the sort of thing which would be difficult to get off the ground, but once the 'tipping point' is reached, it could be extraordinarily valuable. (Or so it seems to me. What do you think?)

Perhaps the main challenge (in principle) is to work out exactly how to standardize the represented information. How, exactly, does one go about converting a literature review into a formal map? (Presumably not any old citation is substantial enough to qualify as a connection, but where do you draw the line? Is there any principled way to do this?)

Discuss.