The main path analysis method is used to analyze the problems of insufficient coverage of key literature and more non-key literature occurring in the main path.In this paper,we propose a new main path discovery method based on the citation path superposition.This paper considers that there is a hidden research path in the reference of each piece of literature and that a large number of such research paths in a given field are superimposed to form the path network in it.The paths with the most overlap times constitute the main path in the field and are then extracted by the local search and glo...