Three Dimensions of Science: A Web Tool for 3D Visualization of Scientific Literature

Abstract

Graphical analysis is one of the primary methods in the study of networks. While the traditional approach uses a two-dimensional (2D) visualization, once the networks become complex, obtaining anything but superficial observations from 2D graphs becomes very difficult, mainly due to the so-called hairball effect, caused by a large number of overlapping nodes and edges. This problem can be effectively addressed with three-dimensional (3D) visualization. The power of modern web browsers' scripting engines can be utilized to provide 3D visualization without a hassle of installing platform-specific software. Consequently, a number of tools serving this purpose were developed, dedicated to the analysis of various types of networks in domains such as biology, social sciences, or engineering. Quite surprisingly, till now there were no free open-source tools of this kind dedicated to the analysis of networks representing bibliographic data. This paper introduces 3dSciLi, a web tool capable of 3D visualization of five types of such networks (work citations and co-citations, author citations and co-authorship, as well as keyword co-occurrence). The tool requires only an input of a set of bibliographic database search results, freeing the researchers from using a pipeline of programs and manual processing of data for the sake of their 3D visualization.