CociteSeer: a system to visualize large cocitation networks

Purpose - The paper's aim is to document the development of a novel tool to address the inadequacies of existing cocitation visualization tools. Design/methodology/approach - The paper demonstrates the visualized effects of this tool and supplements the results with a case study that utilizes a large data set to explore the cross-field studies among different computer science fields. Findings - The tool displays cocitation graphs with latent visual cues and allows direct manipulation of the visualized graphs. The tool also facilitates the exploration of the relationships between articles in the graphs. Research limitations/implications - The indirect cocitation relationships are vividly visualized by the citation network itself. The context lost by the conventional cocitation network may be preserved. Instead of being linked by explicit lines, the implicit cocitation relationships are shown by the closeness among the cocited nodes. Practical implications - The preserved context of a cocitation network may facilitate the exploration of latent cross-field studies. The cocitation visualization tool demonstrates that the context of the cocitation graph is preserved by using the citation network itself to reveal cocitation relationships. Originality/value - The cocitation relationships are implied by the closeness among cocited nodes in a citation graph. The paper documents this novel approach which has not been seen before.