By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 16, 2009
blue,, biology, green, medicine,
red, social sciences, yellow, humanities,
white, mathematics purple, engineering,
A new map of knowledge has been
put toghether by scientists at the research library of the Los
Alamos National Laboratory. It is based on electronic data searches in which
users moved from one publication to another, establishing associations between
The map includes sciences and
humanities, in a hub and wheel arrangement, with the humanities and the sciences
in the center arranged around it. The arrangement came up naturally from the
data and is not invented, said Johan Bollen, the leader of the research team.
On the map, published in the current
edition of "PLoS
are color coded as follows: physics, light purple, Chemistry, blue, biology,
green, medicine, red, social sciences, yellow, humanities, white, mathematics,
purple, engineering, pink.
Interconnecting lines reflect the probability of a reader clicks of a publication
to another on a computer screen.
maps have been constructed based on footnotes in published articles that refer
to articles in other magazines. Dr. Bollen believes that his map, click scholars
represents the best electronic behavior "that makes the citation analysis,
note how the method is called.
One reason is that footnotes are
often added to a variety of social reasons, such as to flatter the commentators
so one can improve his own citation count or impress colleagues with a range
of reading. Clicks represent real scholars use information. In addition, clicks
capture access to an article to use it for practical purposes, instead of just
following the quote, Dr. Bollen said.
A reader can click on a publication
to another based on many other connections besides citations as a text search
or an e-mail message, Dr. Bollen said.
"What we have is a map of the world scientific activity," said Dr.
Bollen. He wants to make its data publicly available to scholars to evaluate
the impact of their or other items and the degree of influence of scientific