Mapping Scientific Frontiers : The Quest for Knowledge Visualization

This is an examination of the history and the state of the art of the quest for visualizing scientific knowledge and the dynamics of its development. Through an interdisciplinary perspective this book presents profound visions, pivotal advances, and insightful contributions made by generations of researchers and professionals, which portrays a holistic view of the underlying principles and mechanisms of the development of science.
This updated and extended second edition:

• highlights the latest advances in mapping scientific frontiers
• examines the foundations of strategies, principles, and design patterns
• provides an integrated and holistic account of major developments across disciplinary boundaries

“Anyone who tries to follow the exponential growth of the literature on citation analysis and scientometrics knows how difficult it is to keep pace. Chaomei Chen has identified the significant methods and applications in visual graphics and made them clear to the uninitiated. Derek Price would have loved this book which not only pays homage to him but also to the key players in information science and a wide variety of others in the sociology and history of science.”

– Eugene Garfield

“This is a wide ranging book on information visualization, with a specific focus on science mapping. Science mapping is still in its infancy and many intellectual challenges remain to be investigated and many of which are outlined in the final chapter. In this new edition Chaomei Chen has provided an essential text, useful both as a primer for new entrants and as a comprehensive overview of recent developments for the seasoned practitioner.”

– Henry Small

Chaomei Chen is a Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, and a ChangJiang Scholar at Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China. He is the Editor-in-Chief ofInformation Visualization and the author of Turning Points: The Nature of Creativity (Springer, 2012) andInformation Visualization: Beyond the Horizon (Springer, 2004, 2006).

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 anyone interested 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)