Algorithmic citation‐linked historiography—Mapping the literature of science

Abstract

Abstract There is a large literature on mapping and visualizing the scholarly literature (White & McCain, ; Buter & Noyons, ). However, none of these methods have been used to create historical displays of works on a given subject. The authors have developed a process and software called HistCite for generating chronological maps of collections resulting from searching the ISI Web of Science (WOS) , SCI/SSCI/AHCI on CD‐ROM or SciSearch on Dialog. Export files are created in which all cited references for source documents are captured. These files are processed by HistCite to generate tables of the most‐cited works. Real time demonstrations of several topics such as bibliographic‐coupling, co‐citation analysis, gene flow, etc. will be provided. The HistCite software includes an expert system for detecting and editing errors or variations in cited references. Export Files of 1,000 or more records are processed in minutes on a PC. Ideally the system will be used to help the searcher quickly identify the most significant work on a topic and trace its year‐by‐year development.