Skip to Main Content

Building a Better Lit Review with VOSviewer

Overview

VOSviewer Context

  • "Visualization of Similarities"
     
  • "VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks may for instance include journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they can be constructed based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature."

Key Terms

  • ITEMS are the objects of interest that we are exploring in VOSviewer (can be publications, researchers, or search terms).
     
  • Relationships between items are called LINKS.
     
  • Links each have STRENGTH, which is a positive numerical value (a higher value indicates a stronger link). Note: More links shared indicates high similarity between items, and thus these items will appear closer together in a visualization.


 

Image source
 

  • Items and links together constitute a NETWORK (set of items together with the links between them).

Key Resources

Choosing An Analysis Type

Selecting Analysis Types

 

I'm interested in... Based on Unit of analysis in VOSviewer Step-by-step tutorial link
identifying seminal papers that many researchers refer to direct citation (i.e., this paper is cited by so many other papers) Citation analysis - documents seminal papers
identifying journals that publish research on a topic direct citation (i.e., these citations appear in these journals) Citation analysis  - sources journal analysis
finding articles that share a common knowledge base

based on the number of shared references (i.e., this paper and this other paper both cite that paper)

"If two documents share several references in common, as Documents A and B do, then those documents are ‘bibliographically coupled’. And there’s at least a possibility that the two Citing Documents are using similar approaches to the research questions they’re respectively addressing.

In many cases the two Citing Documents will be by researchers who are addressing the same research question, or very closely related questions, and so the sharing of references has no deeper significance. A potentially more significant scenario occurs when the two Citing Documents are by researchers working in somewhat different fields. In that situation, the bibliographic coupling is a pointer to at least the possibility of a previously unidentified cross-disciplinary research connection." (source)

 Bibliographic coupling  
finding complementary articles the number of times articles are cited together in the same reference list/article (i.e., this paper and this other paper appear in a reference list for so many other papers)  Co-citations  
surfacing collaboration networks or author similarity authors listed in the same citations Co-authorship collaboration overview
discovering effective search keywords terms occurring together inside documents Co-occurrence topic overview

Search for Data to Import into VOSviewer

Workshop Data Source: Web of Science

Navigate to Web of Science

  • https://www.library.nd.edu/
  • Click "Research" in the menu
  • On the far right side, click "Web of Science" under the "Featured Databases" category

Search Web of Science for a Topic of Interest

  • For this demo, I used "ADHD"

Sort Your Results by "Citation: Highest First"

Export Your Results

  • Plain Text File
  • Records from 1 to 500
  • Full Record and Cited References

Rename the .txt file as applicable for your project and then move it to your project folder 

  • For this demo, it is likely simpler to save the file to your desktop or downloads file—whichever you use and can navigate to easily.
     
  • For a project, it may be useful to pre-determine a naming convention to help you keep track of which output files contain which search results (e.g., YYYYMMDD-Database_Name-Term; YYYYMMDD-Database_Name-Term1_BOOLEAN_Term2, etc.).

Getting Started in VOSviewer

Open VOSviewer

Familiarize yourself with the interface

Create a Visualization 

  • File > Create


 

  • Choose data source: for today's demos, select Read data from bibliographic database files > Next


 

  • Note that we're on the "Web of Science" tab by default, which is where our demo data comes from, so there is nothing to change with respect to the data source tab options at the top of the "Select files" pane
     
  • Click the ellipsis (...) button to open a pop-up box that will allow you to select your .txt file exported from Web of Science > Next

Demo 1: Citation Maps

Citation mapping to identify seminal papers


 

  • You may see a dialog pop-up box telling you that not all of your citations cite each other and that it can map a smaller set of items—click No
     
  • Explore your results—what does this visualization tell you? (proximity, centrality, links?)
     
  • Notice
     
    • that you can hover your mouse over an item on your network and the citation information will appear in the bottom information pane
       
    • that if you click on an item in your network, the article will open up automatically in a new browser tab
       
    • the Items tab in the left-hand action panel
       
      • You can right-click on the top cluster and then expand or collapse all or individual clusters, or, be taken directly to the cluster in the visualization
         
      • You can right-click on an item in a cluster to be taken directly to it in the visualization

Re-run this analysis,

  • but this time
    • Type of analysis: Citation > Unit of analysis: Documents > Finish
    • Click Yes when you see a dialog pop-up box telling you that not all of your citations cite each other.
       
  • Explore your results—how is this visualization of the data different from the first one?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exporting Images

  • File > Screenshot > Options


 

  • Update any options in the pop-up dialog box as applicable > OK


 

  • Select a file type


 

  • Change the Save to location as applicable
  • Type in a filename per your project naming convention 
  • Save 


 

Sharing Interactive Visualizations

  • File > Share > Google Drive
     
  • (The first time you do this you will have to "continue" to enable the application to interact with your Google Drive account)


 

  • Your interactive visualization will launch in a browser tab


 

  • Click the share icon in the upper-right hand corner to view options for sharing via a direct link, embed code, or a QR code.

Demo 2: Bibliographic Coupling Maps - Document Analysis

Bibliographic Coupling Mapping via Document Analysis to identify works that share a common knowledge base 

  • Load your demo data file from Web of Science (see Getting Started in VOSviewer box above).
     
  • Type of analysis: Bibliographic coupling > Unit of analysis: Documents > Counting method: Full counting > Finish
     


 

  • You may see a dialog pop-up box telling you that not all of your citations cite each other and that it can map a smaller set of items—click No
     
  • Explore your results
     
    • Clustered items have the most overlap among their References list, which indicate likely schools of thought
       
    • Notice the clusters of colors—use the Items menu to observe the clusters by source
      • You can right-click on clusters in the Items panel to expand/collapse clusters, and view items directly in the visualization
         
    • Hover your mouse over items in your clusters on the main visualization to view the citation information in the lower information panel
      • You can right-click on an item in the visualization and the article will automatically open in a new browser tab for viewing
         

Demo 3: Bibliographic Coupling Maps - Source Analysis

Bibliographic Coupling Mapping via Source Analysis to identify journals that publish articles in your source dataset

  • Load your demo data file from Web of Science (see Getting Started in VOSviewer box above).
     
  • Type of analysis: Bibliographic coupling > Unit of analysis: Sources > Counting method: Full counting > Next


 

  • Change the Minimum number of documents of a source to 1 > Finish
     


 

  • You may see a dialog pop-up box telling you that not all of your citations cite each other and that it can map a smaller set of items—click No
     
  • Explore your results—what does this map tell you?

Demo 4: Co-Citation Maps

Co-Citation Mapping to find works often cited in the same reference list

  • Load your demo data file from Web of Science (see Getting Started in VOSviewer box above).
     
  • Type of analysis: Co-citation map > Unit of analysis: Cited References > Counting method: Full counting > Next
     


 

  • Change the minimum number of citations of a cited reference to 3 > Finish
     

​​​​
 

  • You may see a dialog pop-up box telling you that not all of your citations cite each other and that it can map a smaller set of items—click No
     
  • Explore your results
     

Demo 5: Co-Authorship Maps

Co-Authorship Mapping to Surface Collaboration Networks

  • Load your demo data file from Web of Science (see Getting Started in VOSviewer box above).
     
  • Type of analysis: Co-authorship map > Unit of analysis: Authors > Counting method: *Fractional counting > Ignore documents with a large number of authors > Maximum number of authors per document: 25 > Finish
     

​​

  • You may see a dialog pop-up box telling you that not all of your citations cite each other and that it can map a smaller set of items—click No
     
  • Explore your results
     

*Full versus fractional counting weight co-authorship example

Researcher Name  # Authors on their Publication Full counting weight Fractional counting weight
Adebayo 1 (Adebayo) 1 1 / 1 = 1 
Singh 2 (Singh & Lopez) 1 1 / 2 = 0.5
Zhang 20 (Zhang et al.) 1 1 / 20 = 0.05