Research is a widely understood as a collaborative effort. This graphic illustrates how researchers from all over the world work together towards a single objective: better understanding of nature. I selected a small community that is working on surface physics of hematite, a mineral that is particularly useful as cost-effective electrode material.
This picture shows the metrics of 144 scientific publications and, more importantly, their connections. Those connections are not only mere citations, but also collaborations, which bring together experimental expertise and theoretical approaches.
I used the information shown in the image for identifying those articles which are key to the subject. Whenever diving into a subject, the number of papers to read and evaluate seems to be too high to allow for a complete overview. This is why I wrote a program to prepare a selection of papers from publication databases. The information used in this process has been visualised here.
Data acquisition, pre-processing: Python script. Rendering: Circos. Post-processing: Inkscape, Gimp. Sources: Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar.
