Interact-able GUI? It should show a very brief summary (maybe even just the title and first author) to begin with, but can be expanded to see details like the abstract, full author list, etc.
Export into a common graph file format (e.g., .graphml) to import into a graph designer (e.g., yEd)
Nodes organized with date along one axis (top-down or left-right, not sure yet), with the sorting along the other axis to minimize edge crossings
Nodes could be sized by impact
Nodes could be colour-coded somehow, maybe by whether they are kept permanently, or if they have been "expanded" (search for upstream and downstream articles complete)
There should be a way to visualize the graph.
Some traits of the visualization:
.graphml
) to import into a graph designer (e.g., yEd)