Electronic Resources Reviews
Web of Science's "Citation Mapping" Tool
Brian D. Simboli
Science Librarian
Library and Technology Services
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
brs4@lehigh.edu
Copyright 2008, Brian D. Simboli. Used with permission.
In July 2008 Thomson Reuters added a new "citation mapping" tool to its Web of Science product. This tool, which is touted on the Web of Science (hereafter, WOS) search interface as a beta version, enables users to visualize the relationship between citing and cited references. The citation mapping tool is a welcome addition to WOS. Below I discuss how the tool works, offer some comments and suggestions about it, and conclude with some notes about future directions.
Persons interested in bibliographic visualization software may also find of interest HistCite, developed by Eugene Garfield, pioneer of cited/citing searching and analysis. For an overview of HistCite, see Herther (2007). This review will not compare the new citation mapping tool in WOS to the features of HistCite, but will reference the HistCite web page in a few places.
A web-based mapping application that actually provides more than just simple mapping capabilities...it's surprisingly polished and well-behaved...he best of the three web-based mind mapping applications I've seen so far.
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