MOTIVATION: The fast growth of bioinformatics adds a significant difficulty to assess the contribution, geographical and thematic distribution of the research publications. RESULTS: To help researchers, grant agencies and general public to assess the progress in bioinformatics, we have developed BIOLITMAP, a web-based geolocation system that allows an easy and sensible exploration of the publications by institution, year and topic. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: BIOLITMAP is available at http://socialanalytics.bsc.es/biolitmap and the sources have been deposited at https://github.com/inab/BIOLITMAP. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.