An Interactive System for CO-Citation Visualization

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An Interactive System forCO-Citation
Visualization

• Xia Lin
• Jan Buzydlowski
• Howard D. White
• Drexel University
• Philadelphia, PA, USA

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Co-Citation

• a method for measuring the common intellectual
  interest between a pair of documents
• Small Griffith (in 70s)

Document 1
cites
Later documents A, B, C,
?
cites
Document 2
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Author Co-Citation

• Insights into the intellectual structure of
  science and scholarship through citations over
  time.
• White Griffith (in 80s)

Author 1
cites
Authors A, B, C,
?
cites
Author 2
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Author as an Icon

• An author
• represents a person
• represents a body of writings.
• A group of related authors
• comes to stand for a body of ideas
• represents subject relationships of documents.

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A Map of Information Scientists
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Map Structures
(Online retrieval)
Retrieval
User
(IR theories)
(Communication)
(General)
Citation
Document
(Bibliometrics)
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Data for Information Scientists Map

• 120 highly cited authors in Information Science
• Co-citation count of every pair of the 120
  authors
• A matrix of 120 by 120 of their co-citation
  counts, converted to Pearson rs

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Data Collection

• Labor-intensive process
• Decided who are highest-cited authors in the
  field
• Conducted thousands of DIALOG searches on paired
  authors
• C(120, 2) 7140 searches
• Processed data in a spreadsheet
• White and McCain (JASIS, April 1998)

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New Interactive System

• The challenges
• To process data and generate the map instantly.
• To provide interactive functions for the viewer
  to explore the map and the underlying data (with
  search engines).
• To provide different maps (with different mapping
  algorithms).

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The Database

• Institute for Scientific Information
• Arts and Humanities Database (AHCI)
• 1988 - 1997
• 1.26 million records
• BRS search engines

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The Old Interface
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System Structure
BRS Search Engines
cgi
Web Interface Java Applet
Java Servlets
Web Server
Mapping Procedures
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The New Interface
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Authors co-cited most often with PLATO
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Kruskal, Joseph B.
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Kruskal, Clyde P.
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Future Development

• Adding different maps
• Pathfinders
• Multidimensional scaling
• Hierarchical clustering
• Adding more interactions with search engines
• Mining and exploration tools
• Subject labels