Exemplars

Here are some examples of how CiteSpace can help us identify significant works in scientific literature even when we have little prior knowledge of a subject domain. We can identify macroscopic patterns of the dynamics of a field such as mass extinctions and recognize the forefront of a fast-growing research field such as regenerative medicine.

Mass Extinctions

Chen, C. (2006) CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(3), 359-377. Citations: over 10,000 on Google Scholar.

What is shown?

The attention of the research in mass extinctions shifted from the stream in green on the K-T extinction to the one in yellow.

Why is it significant?

The descriptions of the dynamics of the field in Chen (2006) and French & Keoberl (2010) are essentially equivalent, except one was made by a domain novice with the help of CiteSpace and the other was made by domain experts in a systematic review published 4 years later.

Regenerative Medicine

Chen, C., Hu, Z., Liu, S., Tseng H. (2012) Emerging trends in regenerative medicine: a scientometric analysis in CiteSpace. Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy 12 (5), 593-608.

What is shown?

The drastic change of the structure of a network indicators profound changes in the field.

Cluster #7

The red arrow points to Cluster #7, which is automatically labeled as #7 induced pluripotent stem cell. The two largest circles with red rings led to the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Why is it significant?

The top-2 articles on this list of citation bursts led to the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine. The Nobel Prize was announced in October, whereas our laymen's study was published four months earlier in May.

String Theory

Chen, C. (2004) Searching for intellectual turning points: Progressive Knowledge Domain Visualization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 101 (Suppl. 1), 5303-5310.

What is shown?

This was a follow-up study of the 2004 paper using CiteSpace 2.1.R12 in August 31, 2008. Maldacena (1998) (#2) has the largest citation circle with a purple ring, which means it is not only highly cited but also plays an important role in connecting other works together. The red blocks are supposed to be segments of a line, but the metric is exceedingly strong.

Why is it significant?

As it turns out, this is an exemplar boundary-spanning work that connect string theory with quantum field theory. He is the recipient of the 2007 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics.