Tools to visualize connections between academic publications

Academic researchers publish a lot of papers. One estimate puts the count at 1.8 million articles published each year, in about 28,000 journals (in 2012). The challenge is to make sense of all these publications.

With the raise of visualization tools, one would expect that there are some great tools out there that provide researchers with easy to use visualizations of how papers and authors are connected.

I distinguish between three different types of visualization tools: Impact factor, co-authors, and citations. Unfortunately, there currently seems to be no tool available that combines all three.

1. Tools to visualize the impact factor of a journal (impact factor diagrams)
Eigenfactor [free] offers dynamic graphs of the impact factor of journal by field. One can choose the field of interest, e.g. chemistry, education, or physics. The dynamic graph shows the journals with the highest impact factors on a timeline from 1997 to the present (slider below the graph). Eigenfactor is an academic research project co-founded by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom and sponsored by the Bergstrom Lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington.

Eigenfactor 'motion graphs' show the impact factor of journals (on a timeline)

2. Tools to visualize the relations between co-authors (co-author mapping)
Do you want to see which researchers published together as co-authors? The 'Visual Explorer' of Microsoft Academic Search [free] focuses on the relations between people. After selecting a certain author, one can choose 'co-author path' in the left hand menu. The dynamically generated diagram show the co-authors of this researcher ('co-author graph'), how this researcher is connected to another researcher ('co-author path' - similar to the Six degrees of Kevin Bacon index), and who cited this researcher ('citation graph').

The 'Visual Explorer' by Microsoft Academic search shows relations between co-authors

3. Tools that visualize the citations between papers (citation mapping)
Do you want to know which papers cited a certain publication (forward mapping)? Do you want to see which papers were cited by a publication? Papercube [free] provides a visual navigation of academic citation networks. The data is a static snapshot of the CiteSeer digital library from 2004. The tools only serves to demonstrate the features but is unfortunately no longer updated.

Papercube shows academic citation networks (based on 2004 data)

Another tool to visualize citation networks is the Web of Science citation graph [paid through libraries]. This tool generates a dynamic graph of citations (forward and backwards). One can click on a specific publication to see details and to re-center the diagram.

Web of Science citation graph

The VOSviewer (which stands for 'visualizing scientific landscapes) is a free stand-alone tool developed by Leiden University. The VOSviewer tool can be used for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks may for instance include journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they can be constructed based on co-citation, bibliographic coupling, or co-authorship relations. Reference lists can be imported from Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed.

VOSviewer

SciMAT (developed by the University of Granada, Spain) is an open source (GPLv3) software tool developed to perform a science mapping analysis under a longitudinal framework. SciMAT allows  to conduct co-word, author co-citation, journal co-citation, author co-citation, bibliographic coupling, journal bibliographic coupling and author bibliographic coupling.

SciMAT

A list of other software for mapping scientific publications:

• Bibexcel

• CiteSpace

• CoPalRed

• IN-SPIRE

• Loet Leydesdorff’s software

• NetworkWorkbench Tool

• Science of Science Tool (Sci2)

• VantagePoint

• Pajek Wiki http://pajek.imfm.si
• OSviewer www.vosviewer.com
• NodeXL http://nodexl.codeplex.com
• NetDraw http://sites.google.com/site/netdrawsoftware
• Cytoscape www.cytoscape.org

Given the advances in data analytics, it is surprising (and disappointing) that there are no better designed tools for academics to explore and discover connections between publications.

Identifying fake physics in videos to teach physics

Popular videos often seemingly impossible jumps, throws, or dunks. Many of these videos have been manipulated.

Physics professor Rhett Allain wrote an interesting post about how you can spot if a video has been manipulated by analysing the physics. Allain's post could by used by physics teachers to teach about physics as well as a resource in a course about video editing. See Allain's post here.

Google announces "Google Classroom"

Google Classroom

Google announced a new, free tool for education, aptly named "Google Classroom". This new tool  (expected in September 2014) will combine existing apps for education into one platform. "Google Classroom" weaves together Google Docs, Drive, Plus, and Gmail. The platform promises to make communication between teachers and students easier by handling digital documents in one shared place (sounds like the infamous "paperless office").

Seamless document exchange between devices with Infinite Surface

Infinite Surface setup

Startup company Infinite Surface offers promising software that allows seamless exchange between multiple devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs, multi-touch tables).

The exchange can be bi-directional (by swiping a document off the edge of the screen it will be moved over to a specified device). Alternatively, the devices can be in synchronization mode (screen mirroring with authoring rights for all devices). The software is web-based and runs on a wide range of devices. The multi-touch table acts as the central hub for all the devices.

A promising concept that hopefully will become available soon.

Inspirational future of learning video

What will the future of learning look like? GOOD magazine created a video that discusses technology-oriented visions from Whole-in-the-Wall and Khan academy to serious gaming. The video features education innovators like Dr. Sugata Mitra, visiting professor at MIT; Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy; and Dr. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF.

The video suggests that the current school system is still based on Victorian-age ideals (such as submission) and industrial age skills (such as arithmetic . People featured in the video suggest that education needs to prepare students for the post-industrial world. Basic arithmetic skills are now less relevant than reading comprehension, information search and retrieval skills, and critical evaluation skills.

Living in front of a computer screen

Children in front of computer screens
[Source: http://images.smh.com.au/2011/06/04/2408569/art-screens-420x0.jpg]

How much time do people spend in front of a computer screen? The 'Halifax Insurance Digital Home Index’ presents findings from an online survey by One Poll in January 2013 that included 2,500 adults aged 18 and over living in the UK. 

Not surprisingly  the survey data indicates that people spend a large amount of time in front of computer screens.

• 73% of the participants would struggle to go one day without technology devices such as smartphones, laptops and MP3 players. 23% would feel ''uneasy or worried'', while 19% would feel concern about ''missing out''.
• 74% check emails and social networks before starting work in the morning.
• 25% check technology devices from their beds, and 10%  take theirs into the bathroom.
• Each owns an average £4,164 worth of technology devices.
• Almost one in 10 (9%) respondents use their phone during mealtimes - a figure that doubles for those aged 18-24. 
• 53% of women use their laptop parallel  to watching television, compared to 43% of men.
• 45% communicate via devices to speak with friends and family despite being in the same house.
  

This survey predicts that current children will spend an average of 25% of their non-working time in front of screens (not counting sleeping time). Dr Aric Sigman, psychologist, says: "As the amount of time spent looking at a screen or plugging in increases, the amount of time spent on direct eye-to-eye contact and developing real life relationships inevitably decreases. By the age of seven years, the average child born today will have spent one full year of 24 hour days watching screen technology; by the time they reach 80 they will have spent almost 18 years of 24 hour days watching non-work related screen technology. That's a quarter of their lives."

In a national study of over 2,000 young people, aged 8 to 18, researchers found that participants were able to squeeze the equivalent of 8.5 hours of electronic media into 6 chronological hours because of multitasking (or rather 'multi-device usage'). By the time Net Generation kids reach their twenties, the typical teenager has spent over 20,000 hours on the Internet and over 10,000 hours playing video games of some kind (Source: Digital game-based learning) [Read more here]. With devices like Google Glass and multi-device usage, time in front of computer screens might soon even exceed 100% of people's work and spare time).

Sources:

• http://finance.yahoo.com/news/digital-home-index-reveals-nation-102908373.html
• http://www.worldtvpc.com/blog/uk-kids-set-to-spend-a-quarter-of-life-at-recreational-screens/

Test your web searching skills

Connected information
[Picture source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/semantics-searching-intuitive-internet_1.jpg]

The internet offers vast amounts of information. The challenge is to find desired information quickly.

These two fun online applications will test your abilities to locate information fast:

"A google a day": Using the google search engine, how quickly do find the answer to question to a given question?

"The Wiki Game": This game asks you to locate information within Wikipedia. The answer can only be found by clicking through related information within Wikipedia pages. The fewer jumps the better.

Want to improve your search skills? Click on the infograph below for helpful Google search tips. [See original infograph here]

The future of digital [Slideshow]

This extensive slideshow presents an interesting overview of the history, present, and future of digital spaces. [Click on "Slide Deck" below]

Crowdsourcing book publishing

UK-based company Unbound is a crowdfunding company for book publishing. Similar to kickstarter, authors pitch their book ideas directly to you. If you back a project before it reaches its funding target, you get your name printed in the back of every copy and immediate behind-the-scenes access to the author’s shed. If any project fails to hit its funding target, you get refunded in full.

Advanced google search tips

Internet and global inequality

The internet promises the provide equal access to information independent of location. However, according to research by the Oxford Internet Institute (published in the book, Geographies of the World's Knowledge), user-generated content is not equally contributed: Especially the U.S. dominates the production of user content. The authors suggest that the causes for this could be a) that people in less developed countries have less leisure time to produce content for free, and b) that people without money can't afford education necessary to produce quality content.

Unfortunately, the internet is not a magic wand that makes the world more equal.


Source: The Internet Does Not Solve Global Inequality - The Atlantic

Daily data flow on the Internet

Created by: MBAOnline.com

Academic Workflow of an Education Researcher

As an academic researcher, I use a number of software and hardware tools in concert. To illustrate my academic workflow, I created the diagram below [Click on image to enlarge].

Academic Workflow Diagram

"Input" includes the tools I use to collect and organize documents. I distinguish between different document types and input sources. My two favorite tools to organize documents are DevonThink and PersonalBrain. DevonThink allows organizing documents into a hierarchical folder structure. The in-built AI supports storting out new documents into matching folders. PersonalBrain is a dynamic 3D mindmap that allows annotating and tagging weblinks and documents. I currently have over 8000 weblinks organized in PersonalBrain.

"Output" includes the tools I use to write and publish documents. To write academic publications, I use Scrivener to create an outline of the documents and work on drafts. I enter reference tags from Sente into Scrivener. Once I reach a final draft, I export the text from Scrivener to Word and use Sente to generate a bibliography.

Microsoft Vision of the Future Video (2011 edition)

This video shows Microsoft's technocratic vision of the future: Augmented reality and technology embedded in glasses, tables, and refrigerators.

Does the internet make schools obsolete?

The internet makes many kinds of information available in an instant. As as result, memorising facts and figures seems to become more and more obsolete. The internet became an integral part of our distributed cognition.

The instant availability of digital information poses fundamental questions for education: What do we still need to learn in schools?

Raymond Nickerson (1996) offers the following answer:

"One might ask at this point: if information does indeed become much more accessible in the future than it is now, will learning still be necessary? If answers to questions can be obtained much more readily through new information resources, will it be so important to have knowledge in one's head? I believe the answer is unequivocally yes. I believe this is the several reasons, but it will suffice to mention one. The asking of questions, except of the most superficial kind, is a knowledge-based activity. Only someone who knows quite a bit about biology is going to ask what is new in the sequencing of bases in the DNA molecule. And even if one were able to ask the question, say because one got it from someone else already formed, without some knowledge of the subject one would not understand the answer. In general, the more one knows, the more useful a powerful information-finding resource is likely to be." (p. 258)

Reference:

Nickerson, R. (1996). On the distribution of cognition: some reflections. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations (pp. 229-262). Cambridge University Press.  

Changing the Epistemology of Wikipedia

Wikipedia aims to collaboratively collect the “sum of all human knowledge" (in the words of Jimmy Wales). However, some critics of Wikipedia believe that the whole Western tradition of footnotes and sourced articles needs to be rethought if Wikipedia is going to continue to gather converts beyond its current borders.  



Achal Prabhala, an adviser to the Wikimedia Foundation, expressed his criticism in a video project, “People are Knowledge”:

People are Knowledge (subtitled) from Achal R. Prabhala on Vimeo.


Prabhala suggests that Wikipedia should allow video and audio statements of people as sources to support articles. This would allow capturing non-written forms of knowledge.


My two cents: If we see knowledge as a social construct, then could Wikipedia add a social voting system for articles (similar to Amazon.com or Youtube). Readers could vote for the reliability of an article and indicate the level of their expertise. This could give readers another indicator of the trustworthiness of a Wikipedia article. 

What are websites made of? (Infograph)

Found here: what_websites_madeof_infographic_full-e1313087947326.jpg (600×4002)

Infograph: How inter-connected are major software companies?

How inter-connected are major software companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and eBay?

Optimized-mashable_infographic_interconnected-tech-companies-2-1.jpg (972×5125)

How Much Digital Data Will Humans Create This Year?

Found here: How Much Data Will Humans Create & Store This Year? [INFOGRAPHIC]

What happens in 60 seconds on the Internet?

This infographic illustrates what happen every 60 seconds on the Internet. [Click to enlarge].

Source: 60 Seconds on the Internet [Infographic]