Ludo Waltman waltmanlr@cwts.leidenuniv.nl
Analyzing bibliometric networks: Tools, techniques, and applications
Bibliometric networks are networks of, for instance, scientific publications, journals, or authors connected by citation or co-authorship links. Other popular bibliometric networks are networks of words or terms extracted from scientific publications and connected by co-occurrence links. In this talk, I will give an overview of the research program into bibliometric network analysis at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University. I will introduce two software tools developed at CWTS for analyzing bibliometric networks: VOSviewer (www.vosviewer.com) and CitNetExplorer (www.citnetexplorer.nl). I will also discuss some of the techniques used in these tools, in particular the unified approach to network layout and network clustering and the smart local moving algorithm for optimizing clustering quality functions. Finally, I will show some practical applications of bibliometric network analysis in the context of research planning and research evaluation, and I will discuss a number of important open research problems.