HistComp : bibliographic analysis and visualization of 'The Biological Bulletin'

A collection of citation data, the HistComp, is available from the Internet as a database of examples of real life citation networks. The purposes of this approach is the analysis of these citation networks on learned literature by presenting its typical steps and results. We have selected the bibliographic insights into the "The Biological Bulletin", the journal published since 1897 by the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. Since the bibliographic networks tend to be very scattered, their visualization requires of criteria of convergence. To simplify, the main features in such a structure should include the survey for authoritative sources in the hyperlinked environment and the identification of thematic areas. By avoiding excessive loose connections and too dense clustered layouts to be useful, a smooth presentation is obtained by graphically depicting the citation patterns. HistComp computes 8884 articles published by 'The Biological Bulletin' between 1945-2003. A two-dimensional positioning of these papers that represent the extent of their bibliographic coupling and co-citation is offered as a histograph. The criteria to construct it is the adequateness of the visualization relative to the 8884 data set. The spatial representation obtained optimizes the identification of the clusters or topic areas. The thematic importance of marine science involves its participation in 7 of the 7 presenting clusters. The mainstream subjects were crustaceans and echinoderms, with some 60% of the material presented in the graph. But sea anemone, with about 16% of the total, remains as the best visualized topical area. A perspective of the highly relevant papers is readily confirmed by the visual inspection of width of the glyphs used for nodes representation. For user interaction, HistComp employs mouse-over labels.