113 Years of Physical Review: Using Flow Maps to Show Temporal and Topical Citation Patterns

Abstract

We visualize 113 years of bibliographic data from the American Physical Society. The 389,899 documents are laid out in a two dimensional time-topic reference system. The citations from 2005 papers are over laid as flow maps from each topic to the papers referenced by papers in the topic making intercitation patterns between topic areas visible. Paper locations of Nobel Prize predictions and winners are marked. Finally, though not possible to reproduce here, the visualization was rendered to, and is best viewed on, a 24" x 30" canvas at 300 dots per inch (DPI).