From Online Journals, a New Map of Scientific Research

click to view full sized image (from nytimes.com)

With more journals and new research floating around on the internet than anyone can keep track of, it is more crucial than ever to understand how these overwhelming volumes of information are actually accessed.  Now, thanks to new research conducted by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, we have a visual “map” of academic subjects–both humanities and sciences–constructed mathematically based on online searches where users followed links among categories.  The team, led by Dr. Johan Bollen, has published its findings in the latest issue of PLoS One.  This research is likely to revolutionize the way we think about academic publishing and how various disciplines are cross-referenced in the real world.

This data may lead to important and unexpected conclusions that a contrived taxonomy, while based on common sense and experience, may fail to capture.  We now know that certain subjects are closely associated not because scientists say they are, but because it is statistically shown that linking from one to the other occurs at a high rate of frequency.  The map is a much “truer” representation of subject associations than the established method, known as citation analysis, which involves using footnotes and citations to determine how often journals in one field are cited within those of a related field.  The reason this method can be misleading, according to the research scientists, is that authors of journal articles may include certain citations for reasons that are personal rather than strictly scientific.  After all, scientists are human, too; ultimately a list of citations, while a well-regulated part of the academic process, is still a human construction.  That’s where the computers come in.

 

“What we have is a map of worldwide scientific activity.” –Dr. Johan Bollen

Based on electronic data logged from about one billion user interactions, the scientists used equations to produce a visual map of scholarly subjects represented by online journals.  The subjects are color coded based on category, and the lines connecting them show the frequency with which users clicked from one to another in a research session.  The proximity of subjects to one another is objectively determined by the strength of these links; similar subjects such as Biochemistry, Analytical Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry appear in a common cluster  It is a fascinating visualization of how people actually find data online, and it seems to capture the real activity of scholarly research better than anything else.

 

It makes perfect sense that there should be such a “road map” of science.  After all, the universe of knowledge is like a terrain to be spatially explored; start at one point, follow what interests you, and see where you end up.  Isn’t that how all great discoveries are made?

To read more:

nytimes.com: Map of Knowledge

Article in PLoS One