Visual exploration of scientific literature to formulate research policy: a case of GIS scholarly communication in Pakistan during 2000-2019

Identifying scientific collaborations helps in establishing new research policies and linkages among academic institutions. Geographical information system (GIS) research is relatively new in higher education in developing countries. Investigating scholarly communication is challenging for GIS research due to its broad application. Therefore, the main objective is to evaluate the current trends of GIS research in higher education in Pakistan. For this, we analyzed patterns of published literature using data from the Web of Science databases for 2000-2019. We used interactive visual exploration of the scientific literature organized in a fine-grained manner to mining research patterns in the field. Results show that international collaborations are highest with China, followed by the USA. We identified 29 academic institutes in Pakistan who made intensive research collaborations with the Chinese Academy of Science. GIS techniques were mostly studied to solve problems in the domains of water, atmospheric, and environmental sciences. GIS research output increased remarkably during the last decade, which we attribute to the availability of scholarships from the Higher Education Commission, the Chinese Government, and US Fulbright initiatives. The research output will help to strengthen the academic exchange on GIS research between higher education institutes.