Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 5.25
A visualization of the literature of co-citation analysis
is indicated by the colors of co-citation links. The earlier works are in colder colors,
i.e. blue. The more recent works are in warmer colors, i.e. in orange. The upper half
of the network was formed the first, whereas the lower left area was the youngest.
The network is divided into clusters of co-cited references based on how tightly
they were coupled. Each cluster is automatically labeled with words from the titles
of articles that are responsible for the formation of the cluster. For example, clusters
such as #86 scientific specialty, #76 co-citation indicator, and #67 author co-citation
structure are found in the region with many areas in blue color. The few clusters in
the middle of the map connect the upper and lower parts, including #21 cocitation
map and #26 information science. Clusters in the lower left areas are relatively new,
including #37 interdisciplinarity and #56 visualization. Technical advances in the
past 10 years have made such visual analytics more accessible than before.
Researchers began to realize that to capture the dynamics of science in action,
science mapping needs to bring in different perspectives and metaphors. Loet
Leydesdorff of University of Amsterdam argued that evolutionary perspectives are
more appropriate for mapping science than a historical perspective commonly taken
by citation analysts (Leydesdorff and Wouters 2000 ). Leydesdorff suggested that
the metaphor of geometrical mappings of multidimensional spaces is gradually
being superseded by evolutionary metaphors. Animations, movies, and simulations
are replacing snapshots. Science is no longer perceived as a solid body of unified
knowledge in a single cognitive dimension. Instead, science may be better repre-
sented as a network in a multi-dimensional space that develops not only within the
boundaries of this space, but also by co-evolutionary processes creating dimensions
Search WWH ::




Custom Search