Visual exploration of scientific literature with VOSviewer

Introduction

Key terms: analysis of literature , bibliometrics, bibliometric visualisation,  science mapping, VOSviewer software tool, introductory course, relevant for students in any PhD phase.

ECTS: 1.5
Number of sessions: 2
Hours per session: 4

It is essential for researchers to have an up-to-date understanding of the literature in their research field. However, keeping up with all relevant literature and obtaining a good overview of a research field can be difficult and time consuming. 

Bibliometric visualisations serve as an effective tool for addressing and overcoming these challenges. Such visualisations provide intuitive overviews of the literature in a research field, enabling researchers to obtain a better understanding of the structure and development of a field and identify key contributions and influential actors.

VOSviewer (www.vosviewer.com) is one of the software tools that can be used for bibliometric visualisation. In this course, through hands-on exercises, participants will learn how to use this software tool to create visualisations of their own research field using a bibliographic data source of their choice (e.g., Dimensions, Lens, OpenAlex, Scopus, or Web of Science). 

In addition to learning how to create bibliometric visualisations, participants will also be trained in interpreting these visualisations and in using them to deepen their understanding of their research field. Finally, the course will demonstrate how to publish and share interactive visualisations using VOSviewer Online, the web-based version of the software tool.

Entry level and relevance

This is an introductory course. It is designed for people who have no or limited experience with VOSviewer. No prior knowledge or research experience is required.

The course is useful for researchers in any phase of their PhD trajectory, from any research discipline.

Relations with other courses

This course may be taken either before or after the EGSH courses Doing the systematic literature review and Searching and managing your literature. The latter two courses address related or broader topics pertaining to systematic literature reviewing and literature search strategies respectively, and include only a brief introduction to VOSviewer.

Sessions and preparations

Session 1: Bibliometric visualisation, data collection, and VOSviewer
•    Introduction to bibliometric visualisation and to the VOSviewer software tool
•    Bibliographic data sources
•    Co-authorship visualisations
Preparations: participants will need to download the latest version of VOSviewer and test whether it runs on their computer before session 1 begins.

Session 2: Creating different types of bibliometric visualisations  
•    Citation-based visualisations
•    Term/keyword co-occurrence visualisations
•    Overlay visualisations