Mapping Scientific Frontiers

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 1-38

3. Mapping the Universe

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 39-65

4. Mapping the Mind

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 67-99

5. Enabling Techniques for Science Mapping

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 101-133

6. On the Shoulders of Giants

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 135-166

7. Tracing Competing Paradigms

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 167-190

8. Tracking Latent Domain Knowledge

   • Chaomei Chen

   Pages 191-223

9. Back Matter

   Pages 225-240

   PDF

Mapping Scientific Frontiers examines the history and the latest developments in the quest for knowledge visualization from an interdisciplinary perspective, ranging from theories of invisible colleges and competing paradigms, to practical applications of visualization techniques for capturing intellectual structures, and the rise and fall of scientific paradigms. Containing simple and easy to follow diagrams for modeling and visualization procedures, as well as detailed case studies and real world examples, this is a valuable reference source for researchers and practitioners, such as science policy analysts, funding agencies, consultancy firms, and higher education institutions. It presents 163 illustrations, 111 in colour, including maps, paintings, images, computer visualizations and animations.

• Citation analysis
• Mapping science
• Visualizing science
• algorithms
• animation
• behavior
• calculus
• information visualization
• knowledge
• knowledge discovery
• modeling
• reduction
• science
• semantics
• visualization
• data structures

From the reviews:

"…Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization is an excellent book and is highly recommended. The book convincingly outlines general theories concerning cartography, visual communication, and science mapping - especially how metaphors can make a big picture simple and useful. The author likewise shows how the GSA framework is based not only on technical possibilities but indeed also on the visualization principles presented in the beginning chapters. Also, the author does a fine job of explaining why the mapping of scientific frontiers needs a combined effort from a diverse range of underlying disciplines, such as philosophy of science, sociology of science, scientometrics, domain analyses, information visualization, knowledge discovery, and data mining. "

Jesper W. Schneider, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark, Aalborg Branch

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2003

"This book investigates mapping scientific frontiers from the perspective of visual thinking and visual exploration (visual communication). … addresses an audience with different disciplinary backgrounds and tries to stimulate interdisciplinary research. … Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization is an excellent book and is highly recommended. The book convincingly outlines general theories concerning cartography, visual communication, and science mapping – especially how metaphors can make a big picture simple and useful." (Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology – online, December, 2003)

"Some visual tools used by the author to reveal shifts in scientific paradigms, which he calls scientific frontiers, are discussed in this book. … A wealth of color figures of co-citation maps are contained in the book, which the author uses to support his conclusions. … I recommend this book to anyoneinterested in new ways of searching the scientific literature." (P. Spoerri, Computing Reviews, July, 2003)

"Chen completed his first book … when working on a funded research project at Brunei University. The book being reviewed here has been published following his move to Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. … is devoted to science mapping and scientific frontiers. … This excellent book, suggesting as it does new methods for studying science and containing many illustrations in colour, will be of great interest both to visualisation students and to all those interested in studying the sociology of science." (Journal of Documentation, Vol. 59 (3), 2003)

"Contributed by an expert in information science … this book can be an important text for cartographers. A distinguished feature is its colourful maps and illustrative figures, making it more readable. The book is likely to appeal to a wide audience from a variety of disciplines, involving the philosophy of science, information retrieval, scientometrics, bibliometrics, domain analysis and also information visualization. The book forms a significant contribution to the mapping of knowledge domains … and to applications involving data mining using large databases." (Bin Jiang, The Cartographic Journal, Vol. 42 (2), 2005)

• College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA

  Chaomei Chen

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