Skip to main content
Log in

Update on science mapping: Creating large document spaces

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Science mapping projects have been revived by the advent of virtual reality software capable of navigating large synthetic three dimensional spaces. Unlike the earlier mapping efforts aimed at creating simple maps at either a global or local level, the focus is now on creating large scale maps displaying many thousands of documents which can be input into the new VR systems. This paper presents a general framework for creating large scale document spaces as well as some new methods which perform some of the individual processing steps. The methods are designed primarily for citation data but could be applied to other types of data, including hypertext links.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. H. Small, E. Garfield, The geography of science: Disciplinary and national mappings,Journal of Information Science, 11 (1985) 147–159.

    Google Scholar 

  2. H. Small, B. C. Griffith, The structure of scientific literature I: Identifying and graphing specialties,Science Studies, 4 (January 1974) 17–40.

    Google Scholar 

  3. H. Small, Navigating the citation network,Proc. 58th Annual Meeting Amer. Soc. Infor. Sci., 32 (1995) 118–126.

    Google Scholar 

  4. D. R. Swanson, Two medical literatures that are logically but not bibliographically connected,J. Am. Soc. Info. Sci., 38(4) (1987) 228–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. P. Higgs, Labs' ‘virtual reality’ shell get down to business,Sandia Lab News (Dec. 1, 1995).

  6. P. H. Sneath, R. R. Sokal,Numerical Taxonomy, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1973, p. 245.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. H. Small, E. Sweeney, E. Greenlee, Clustering the Science Citation Index using co-citations. II. Mapping science,Scientometrics, 8 (1985) 321–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. B. C. Griffith, H. Small, The structure of scientific literatures II: The macro and micro-structure of science,Science Studies, 4 (October 1974) 339–365.

    Google Scholar 

  9. M. Callon, J. Law, A. Rip, Qualitative scientometrics.Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology,M. Callon,J. Law,A. Rip (Eds), London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1986, pp. 103–123.

    Google Scholar 

  10. J. A. Wise, J. J. Thomas, K. Pennock, D. Lantrip, M. Pottier, A. Schur, V. Crow, Visualizing the non-visual: Spatial analysis and interaction with information from text documents,Proc. of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization '95,N. Gershon,S. G. Eick (Eds), Los Alamos: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995, pp. 51–58.

    Google Scholar 

  11. P. Healey, H. Rothman, P. K. Hoch, An experiment in science mapping for research planning,Research Policy, 15 (1986) 233–251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. M. Zitt, E. Bassecoulard, Redall rates of co-citation techniques: Bibliometric constraints and improvement in micro studies,Proceedings of the 5th Biennial Conference of the Int. Soc. for Scientometrics and Informetrics,M. E. D. Koenig,A. Bookstein (Eds), Medford, NJ: Learned Information Inc., 1995, pp. 659–668.

    Google Scholar 

  13. R. R. Braam, H. F. Moed, A. F. J. Van Raan, Mapping of science by combined co-citation and word analysis, I. Structural aspects,J. Amer. Soc. Info. Sci., 42 (1991) 233–251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. M. M. Kessler, Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers,American Documentation, 14 (1963) 10–25.

    Google Scholar 

  15. H. Small,Proc. of the 58th ASIS Annual Meeting, op. cit..

    Google Scholar 

  16. R. A. Amsler, Applications of citation-based automatic classification, unpublished report, University of Texas, 1972.

  17. P. Doreian, V. Batagelj, A. Ferligoj, Partitioning networks based on generalized concepts of equivalence,Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 19(1) (1994) 1–27.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. H. Small, E. Sweeney, E. Greenlee,Scientometrics op. cit..

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. A. Jain, R. C. Dubes,Algorithms for Clustering Data, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988, p. 41.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. R. C. T. Lee, J. R. Slagle, H. Blum, A triangulation method for the sequential mapping of points for N-space to two-space,IEEE Transactions on Computers, C26 (1977) 288–292.

    Google Scholar 

  21. H. Small, A. SCI-map case study: Building a map of AIDS research,Scientometrics, 30 (1994) 229–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. H. Small, H. Rothman, Investigations into the structure of science and social science using the SCI-map system, in:Identifying Innovation in Social Science: Some Bibliometric Approaches, SPSG Review Paper No. 8, Oct. 1994.

  23. R. Burgin, The retrieval effectiveness of five clustering algorithms as a function of indexing exhaustivity,J. Am. Soc. Info. Sci., 46(8) (1995) 562–572.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  24. K. McCain, personal communication.

  25. H. Small, E. Garfield,Journal of Information Science, op. cit..

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Small, H. Update on science mapping: Creating large document spaces. Scientometrics 38, 275–293 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02457414

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02457414

Keywords

Navigation