The Map of Scientific Paradigms

One of the projects from Information Esthetics, the Map of Scientific Paradigms by Kevin Boyack, Dick Klavans and W. Bradford Paley shows how scientific papers in different fields are connected through their citations.

As to what the image depicts, it was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 scientific papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as red and blue circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Links (curved lines) were made between the paradigms that shared common members, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms closer to one another when a physical simulation forced them all apart: thus the layout derives directly from the data. Larger paradigms have more papers. Labels list common words unique to each paradigm.

 Thanks for sending in the link Alwyn!