Main path analysis is first propoedproposed in Hummon and Doreian (1989)<ref name=":0" /> in which they suggest a different approach for analyzing a citation network "where the connective threads through a network are preserved and the focus is on the links in the network rather than on the nodes."<ref name=":0" /> They call the resulting chain of the most used citation links "main path" and claim that "It is our intuition that the main path, selected on the basis of the most used path will identify the main stream of a literature." The idea was verified using a set of DNA research articles. To make the method more practical, Liu and Lu (2012)<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Liu|first=John S.|last2=Lu|first2=Louis Y.Y.|date=2012-03-01|title=An integrated approach for main path analysis: Development of the Hirsch index as an example|url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.21692/abstract|journal=Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology|language=en|volume=63|issue=3|pages=528–542|doi=10.1002/asi.21692|issn=1532-2890}}</ref> extends the method to include the key-route search. The most useful feature of the key-route search is that one is able to view the different level of main paths by adjusting the key-route numbers.
