Frequently asked
questions

Gaptrium™ accepts PDF, TXT, BibTeX (.bib), RIS, and CSV files. You can also paste text directly or fetch content from a URL.

For best results with academic literature, use PDFs exported directly from the publisher or your reference manager. Scanned PDFs without embedded text will not parse correctly.

A term is a concept, keyword, or phrase you want Gaptrium™ to measure across your corpus. The platform calculates how frequently each term appears and in how many documents — revealing which concepts are well-covered and which are underrepresented (gaps).

Good starting points: the key concepts of your research field, competing theories, methodology names, population groups, or emerging topics you suspect are underexplored.

Start with 10–20 terms and refine based on what the Gap Analysis reveals. The Trend Discovery tool can suggest terms gaining momentum that you may not have considered.

The Trial is free, permanent, and requires no credit card. It gives you access to the core analysis tools — Heat Map, Gap Analysis, Bridge Map — with up to 20 documents and 50 terms per analysis.

Paid plans unlock higher document limits, advanced intelligence tools (Pulse Editorial, Pulse Research, Patent Explorer, Author Intelligence), and larger term sets. See the full comparison →

The Gap Analysis shows each term scored by coverage — the percentage of documents in which the term appears. Terms are sorted from least covered (top) to most covered (bottom).

How to interpret:

• Low coverage (<30%) — the term exists in the field but your corpus barely addresses it. This is a potential gap and publication opportunity.
• Medium coverage (30–70%) — the term is present but not dominant. Worth investigating whether it is treated superficially.
• High coverage (>70%) — well-represented in your corpus. Not a gap.

Use the gap threshold slider to define what counts as a gap for your corpus size. A smaller corpus may warrant a lower threshold.

The Heat Map is a document × term matrix. Each cell shows whether a specific term appears in a specific document. This lets you see patterns across your entire corpus at a glance — which documents cover which concepts, and which documents share thematic territory.

The Gap Analysis aggregates the Heat Map into a ranked list — it answers "which terms are underrepresented overall?" The Heat Map answers "where exactly are those gaps distributed across my documents?"

Use the Heat Map to identify clusters of documents that completely ignore certain concepts — these are your most defensible gap claims.

The Bridge Map shows terms that appear in two or more documents — the conceptual bridges that connect different parts of your corpus. Unlike the Heat Map which shows all terms, Bridge Map filters to only terms that create connections across documents.

A term that bridges many documents is a conceptual anchor of your field. A term that bridges only a few documents is a domain-specific detail rather than a theoretical bridge.

Example: In a corpus spanning computer science, law, and sociology on surveillance — "privacy" bridges all three domains (anchor), while "CCTV" only bridges two CS papers (technical detail).

Trial and Scope plans support up to 3 corpora. Signal supports up to 5, Core up to 10.

Pulse has three components, each monitoring a different channel:

• Pulse Editorial — tracks press coverage of your terms across 65 global RSS feeds, updated 4× daily. Use it to see if your research gaps are gaining media momentum.
• Pulse Research — queries OpenAlex (250M+ academic works) to show publication volume and trends for your terms over time.
• Pulse Patents — monitors patent filings related to your terms. Accelerating patents with quiet press is a pre-competitive signal.

The most powerful use: run Gap Analysis first to identify your gaps, then take those gap terms into Pulse to validate whether they are genuinely underexplored or simply covered in different channels you hadn't considered.

Pulse is available from Scope onwards. Pulse Patents requires Signal or above.

Deterministic means same corpus + same parameters = same result, always. Gaptrium™ uses fixed algorithms — term frequency counting and positional weighting — not neural networks or probabilistic models.

This matters because:

• Your findings are reproducible — any reviewer with the same documents gets the same numbers.
• Your findings are auditable — every score traces back to a specific count in a specific document.
• No hallucinations, no opaque scoring, no model training on your data.

For research submitted to journals, dissertations, or grant applications, a deterministic finding is defensible. An AI-generated summary is not.

Yes — use the Projects feature in the sidebar to save your corpus configuration, terms, and settings as a .lacuna project file. You can reload it in a future session to resume exactly where you left off.

Note that because documents never leave your device, the project file saves the configuration but not the document content. When you reload a project you will need to have the same documents available on your device.

No. All document analysis runs entirely in your browser using local computation. No file content, PDF data, or corpus text is transmitted to Lacuna Labs servers at any time. This is an architectural guarantee — the server infrastructure has no capability to receive document content.

The only exception is the URL fetch mode, where content from a URL passes through a proxy server to bypass browser security restrictions. The content is not stored. For confidential documents, always use file upload or paste mode instead.

Lacuna Labs collects only what is necessary to provide the service:

• Account data — email address, name, hashed password, plan tier
• Usage metadata — last access timestamp, subscription status
• Billing data — handled entirely by Paddle (our Merchant of Record); Lacuna Labs does not store payment card details

Lacuna Labs does not collect document content, analysis results, term lists, or any corpus data. Your research stays yours.

Full details in our Privacy Policy →

Yes. Gaptrium™ complies with UK GDPR, EU GDPR, LGPD (Brazil), and the Swiss nFADP (in force since September 2023).

Compliance is architectural: because document content never reaches our servers, the most sensitive data processing concern — corpus data — is entirely outside our infrastructure. There is nothing to be GDPR-compliant about for corpus data because we never have it.

The platform is hosted by Infomaniak SA in Switzerland, which benefits from EU and UK adequacy decisions.

Yes. API keys entered in Settings (for AI Advisor, Pulse Editorial, etc.) are stored exclusively in your browser's localStorage. They are never transmitted to Lacuna Labs servers.

When you use the AI Advisor, your terms are sent directly from your browser to the AI provider (e.g. OpenAI) using your own key. Lacuna Labs never sees the key or the AI provider's response.

You can upgrade directly from any page on the site by clicking the Subscribe button on the plan you want, or from within the platform via My Account → Subscription & Billing → Upgrade.

Payment is processed securely by Paddle.com, our Merchant of Record. You will be charged in your local currency at the current exchange rate. Prices shown on the site are in GBP for reference.

Monthly — billed every month, cancel anytime. Access continues until the end of the current billing period after cancellation. No refund for the remaining period.

Annual — billed once per year, equivalent to saving 2 months compared to monthly. Eligible for a full refund within 14 days of purchase. After 14 days, no refund — access continues until the end of the annual period.

Annual billing is recommended if you have an ongoing research project or institutional use case.

Yes, at any time. Go to the Billing Portal → to cancel, update your payment method, or download invoices.

After cancellation your access continues until the end of the current billing period. Your account then reverts to the free Trial tier — your settings and project configurations are preserved.

Annual plans: full refund within 14 days of purchase or renewal. Submit requests to FAQ Method hello@lacunalabs.eu within the eligible window.

Monthly plans: non-refundable. Cancel anytime — access continues until end of billing period.

We offer a permanent free Trial precisely so you can evaluate the platform before committing to a paid plan. See our full Refund Policy →

The Education plan covers your entire institution for a flat monthly fee — no user counting, no individual licences. Access is granted to anyone who registers with a verified email from your institutional domain.

Education and Core plans require manual verification of eligibility. Contact hello@lacunalabs.eu with your institutional email and organisation name to apply. We verify eligibility and send a payment link individually.

Support is available by plan:

• Trial / Scope — this FAQ is your primary resource. For billing issues, use the Billing Portal.
• Education / Signal — email support at FAQ Method hello@lacunalabs.eu, available to the designated administrator of your organisation only. Response within 2 business days.
• Core — dedicated email support for your designated administrator. Response within 1 business day.

Email hello@lacunalabs.eu with subject "Bug Report" and include:

• What you were doing when the issue occurred
• What you expected to happen
• What actually happened
• Your browser and operating system
• A screenshot if possible

Bug reports are welcome from all users regardless of plan.

For most billing issues — invoices, payment method updates, cancellation — use the self-service Billing Portal →

For issues not resolved by the portal, contact hello@lacunalabs.eu. Payments are processed by Paddle.com — for disputes about charges on your statement, reference Paddle's Buyer Terms.