This document provides an overview of bibliometric visualizations using VOSviewer software. It discusses the explosive growth of scientific literature and available bibliographic data sources. VOSviewer allows visualization of co-authorship, citation-based, and term co-occurrence networks. Hands-on demonstrations are provided for creating co-authorship maps, citation maps of publications and journals, and term maps. Bibliometric maps provide insights into the structure and relationships within a research field.

1. Bibliometrische visualisaties voor het bijhouden van
wetenschappelijke literatuur
Nees Jan van Eck
Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University
VOGIN-IP-lezing
21 oktober 2021

2. About myself
• Master in computer science
• PhD thesis on bibliometric mapping of science
• Senior researcher at CWTS
– Bibliometric network analysis and visualization
– Bibliometric data sources
– Bibliometric indicators
• Head of ICT
1

3. Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)
• Research center at Leiden University
• Science and technology studies, with a considerable
emphasis on scientometrics
• About 50 staff members
• Our mission: Making the science system better!
• Full access to large bibliographic database (Web of
Science, Scopus, Dimensions, PubMed, PATSTAT,
etc.)
2

4. Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)
• Basic research:
– Quantitative science studies
– Science and evaluation studies
– Science, technology and innovation studies
• Commissioned research:
– Bibliometric studies for universities, funding organizations, governments, scientific publishers, etc.
– Mostly done using the in-house databases of CWTS
3

5. Program
• Introduction
• Hands-on assignments
– Data collection
– VOSviewer:
• Co-authorship maps
• Citation-based maps
• Term maps
4

6. Introduction
5

7. Explosive growth of scientific literature
6
“A new scientific paper is published
every 30 seconds and there are
10,000 updates to PubMed every day”
“It is impossible for humans alone to
process all of the complex information
potentially available to them for the
advancement of scientific research”
James Chandler, November 2016, BenevolentAI

8. Bibliographic data sources
7

9. Bibliographic data sources
8
Web of Science Scopus Dimensions
Journals 20,000 25,000 50,000
Publications 60 million 50 million 110 million
Citations 1.4 billion 1.5 billion 1.2 billion

10. Bibliometric networks
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WoS
Scopus
Dimensions
Lens
MAG
Semantic Scholar
PubMed
Europe PMC
Crossref
Citation network
of pubs / journals / authors / orgs / countries
Co-authorship network
of authors / orgs / countries
Co-citation network
of pubs / journals / authors / orgs / countries
Co-occurrence network
of keywords / terms
Bibliographic coupling network
of pubs / journals / authors
Bibliographic
data source

11. VOSviewer
10

12. VOSviewer
• Focus on visualization of scientometric networks
• Support for large number of data sources
• Text mining functionality
• Advanced visualization features
• Relatively easy to use
• Limited analysis options
• Developed at CWTS
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13. Users of VOSviewer
• Researchers
• Research institutions
• Research funders
• Scientific publishers
• Industry
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14. 13

15. 14

16. Text mining
15
JOI
Scientometrics
JASIST

17. Development of VOSviewer
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18. Types of networks supported by each data source
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Co-authorship Co-occurrence Citation Bibliographic
coupling
Co-citation
Web of Science     
Scopus     
Dimensions     
PubMed     
Crossref     
Europe PMC     
Lens     
Microsoft Academic     
Semantic Scholar     
OCC / COCI     
Wikidata     

19. Data access
18
Download

20. Interactive querying
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21. 20

22. 21

23. 22

24. Data collection
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25. Data access
24
Download

26. Downloading Web of Science data
Pay attention to the following:
• Use the Web of Science Core Collection database
• Use the Full Record and Cited References option
• Use a suitable file format:
– VOSviewer supports both the plain text and the tab-delimited format
– Tab-delimited files can be easily processed using spreadsheet software
• We use the tab-delimited format
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27. 26
Downloading Web of Science data

28. Downloading Web of Science data
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29. Downloading Web of Science data
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30. Downloading Scopus data
• Use the CSV export option, not the Download option!
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31. Downloading Scopus data
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32. Downloading Scopus data
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33. Downloading Scopus data
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34. Downloading Dimensions data
• Make sure to create a user account!
• Extract the CSV file from the downloaded ZIP file
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35. Downloading Dimensions data
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36. Downloading Dimensions data
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37. Downloading Dimensions data
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38. Downloading Lens data
• Create a user account if you want to export more than 1,000 search results
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39. Downloading Lens data
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40. Downloading Lens data
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41. Demonstration + Data collection assignment
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42. Co-authorship maps
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43. Co-authorship map of researchers
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44. Co-authorship map of organizations
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45. Co-authorship map of ASMS members
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46. Co-authorship map of research organizations
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47. Demonstration + Co-authorship map assignments
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48. Citation-based maps
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49. Determining relatedness based on citation data
• Determining relatedness of publications, journals, authors, etc. based on
citation data:
– Direct citation relations
– Bibliographic coupling relations
– Co-citation relations
• VOSviewer supports all three types of citation-based relations
• Another tool, CitNetExplorer, is focused entirely on direct citation relations
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50. Direct citation relations
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P1 P2
P1 and P2 are related because P1 has cited P2
(i.e., P2 appears in the reference list of P1)

51. Bibliographic coupling relations
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P2
P3
P4
P1
Citing papers
Cited papers
P1 and P2 are related
because they have cited
P3, P4, and P5 in their
reference list
P5

52. Co-citation relations
51
P2
P3
P1
Citing papers
Cited papers
P1 and P2 are related
because they are co-cited
in the reference lists of P3,
P4, and P5
P4
P5

53. Direct citation network of publications
52
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
Citation network
(directed)
Citation network
(undirected)
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6

54. Bibliographic coupling network of publications
53
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
2
1
1
1
Citation network
Bibliographic
coupling network

55. Co-citation network of publications
54
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
2
1
1
1
Citation network
Co-citation network

56. Comparison of different types of citation-based
relations
• Direct citation relations:
– Focus on recent publications
– Stable (direct citation relations won’t change in the future)
– Some publications may have no direct citation relations
• Bibliographic coupling relations:
– Focus on recent publications
– Stable (bib. coupling relations won’t change in the future)
– Publications almost always have bib. coupling relations
• Co-citation relations:
– Focus on older publications
– Unstable (co-citation relations may change in the future)
– Some publications may have no co-citation relations
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57. Journal citation map
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58. Journal co-citation map

59. Interpretation of a citation-based map
• Size:
– The larger an item (e.g., author or journal), the larger the number of publications of the item
• Distance:
– In general, the smaller the distance between two items, the higher the relatedness of the items, as
measured by citations, bibliographic coupling or co-citations
– The horizontal and vertical axes have no special meaning; maps can be freely rotated and flipped
• Colors:
– Colors indicate clusters of strongly related items
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60. Citation-based maps supported by VOSviewer
• Citation and bibliographic coupling maps:
– Publications
– Journals
– Authors
– Organizations
– Countries
• Co-citation maps:
– Cited references
– Cited journals
– Cited authors (first author only in the case of Web of Science)
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61. Demonstration + Citation-based maps assignments
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62. Term maps
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63. Term co-occurrence network

64. Interpretation of a term map
• Size:
– The larger a term, the higher the frequency of occurrence of the term
• Distance:
– In general, the smaller the distance between two terms, the higher the relatedness of the terms, as
measured by co-occurrences
– The horizontal and vertical axes have no special meaning; maps can be freely rotated and flipped
• Colors:
– Colors indicate clusters of closely related terms
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65. Term co-occurrence network: Journal overlays

66. Term co-occurrence network: Time trend overlay

67. Term co-occurrence network: Citation impact overlay

68. Term map of Dutch biomedical research
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69. Term map of Dutch biomedical research: Activity
overlay LUMC
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70. Term map of Dutch biomedical research: Activity
overlay VUmc
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71. Term map of Alzheimer research: Overlay based on
publication year
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72. Term map of clinical neurology research: Citation
overlay
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73. Demonstration + term map assignments
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74. Wrap-up
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75. Aim of bibliometric maps
• To provide an overview of the structure of the scientific literature in a certain
domain or on a certain topic
• Applications:
– To identify the main research areas within a scientific field
– To get insight into the size of the different areas
– To see how the areas relate to each other
• Bibliometric maps are especially useful when one has to deal with a relatively
large body of literature
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76. Bibliometric mapping process
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research
question
bibliographicd
ata
bibliometric
map
results
data collection data processing
analysis
interpretation
revision

77. Use of scientometric visualizations
• Visualizations can be used to make complex information more accessible
• Visualizations need to be used in combination with expert knowledge:
– Confirm expert knowledge
– Challenge expert knowledge
– Draw expert’s attention to interesting information
• Be aware of information loss and methodological sensitivity
• Visualizations can also be used pragmatically to attract attention and to ‘sell
a message’
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78. Do it yourself!
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www.vosviewer.com www.citnetexplorer.nl

79. Course: Visualizing Science Using VOSviewer
• January 25-28, 2022
• 4 half-day online sessions
• Participants are introduced into the main techniques for visualizing science
• Special attention is paid to applications in a research evaluation and
research management context
• The course has an interactive format and the small group size allows
participants to practice extensively with the VOSviewer software
• www.cwts.nl
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80. Thank you for your attention!
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81. Further reading
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82. Further reading
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