This workshop will provide a brief introduction to bibliometric analysis as methodology before diving into a free data visualization tool—VOSviewer—that supports this work. The focus of this session will be a thorough look at how VOSviewer can take a bibliographic dataset and provide new perspectives on questions including: What are the main topics or research areas in a field? How do these relate to each other? How has a specific field developed over time? We’ll dive into VOSviewer’s functionality and core features with live demonstrations of the software, and then we’ll reflect on what fields make use of this methodology and how libraries and library workers can support data visualization for bibliometric analysis.
After this workshop, attendees can expect to:
- Understand the possibilities of data visualization as one tool for bibliometric analysis
- Grasp the core functionality of VOSviewer
- Explore the ways that library workers might use VOSviewer for their own research and in support of the research of their communities
As an optional followup to this workshop, attendees may wish to download the free VOSviewer software and create their own visualizations. Versions of VOSviewer for various operating systems can be downloaded at vosviewer.com/download. A practice dataset and instructions for replicating the workshop’s live demos will be shared with all registrants along with the workshop recording. We’ll also work through these practice exercises in Part 2 of this workshop, Hands-on with VOSviewer.
Before attending this workshop, please note:
- This workshop will not include a comprehensive discussion of bibliometrics. For a broader grounding in this methodology, see Virginia Wilson’s overview for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice and consider watching a recording of METRO’s webinar on Bibliometrics for Librarians conducted by Selenay Aytac in 2024.This workshop will refer to the process of data cleaning but will not cover that work in detail. For more on data cleaning, consider watching METRO’s two-part webinar on Managing Messy Data conducted by Katie Wolf in 2022: Part 1 and Part 2.
About our presenter:
Jen Hoyer is an information worker based in New York, NY. She currently works as Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She works on projects related to information access and archives activation and is passionate about how access to information impacts individuals and their identity within larger communities. Learn more at jenhoyer.info.