[arnath]

This is a super cool idea! I've sort of mused about an idea for general web search that's very similar to this concept, where you start with a set of trusted entities and then branch out from there, but choosing how you establish trust is really important. But this is a really clever application, well done!

[fads_go]

so you mean how academics search for relevant publications on a topic, which is the direct inspiration for the original Google ranking algorithm, back in the happy days when the web was young and had not optimized itself around short-term money making.