Document Open Access Logo

Enabling the Discovery of Thematically Related Research Objects with Systematic Spatializations

Authors Sara Lafia , Christina Last, Werner Kuhn

PDF
Thumbnail PDF

File

LIPIcs.COSIT.2019.18.pdf
  • Filesize: 11.41 MB
  • 14 pages

Document Identifiers

Author Details

Sara Lafia
  • Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Christina Last
  • School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, UK
Werner Kuhn
  • Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions that André Bruggmann and Sara Fabrikant of University of Zurich’s Geographic Information Visualization and Analysis Unit made during André’s time as a Visiting Scholar at UCSB’s Center for Spatial Studies as well as financial support from Jack and Laura Dangermond.

Cite AsGet BibTex

Sara Lafia, Christina Last, and Werner Kuhn. Enabling the Discovery of Thematically Related Research Objects with Systematic Spatializations. In 14th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 142, pp. 18:1-18:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2019.18

Abstract

It is challenging for scholars to discover thematically related research in a multidisciplinary setting, such as that of a university library. In this work, we use spatialization techniques to convey the relatedness of research themes without requiring scholars to have specific knowledge of disciplinary search terminology. We approach this task conceptually by revisiting existing spatialization techniques and reframing them in terms of core concepts of spatial information, highlighting their different capacities. To apply our design, we spatialize masters and doctoral theses (two kinds of research objects available through a university library repository) using topic modeling to assign a relatively small number of research topics to the objects. We discuss and implement two distinct spaces for exploration: a field view of research topics and a network view of research objects. We find that each space enables distinct visual perceptions and questions about the relatedness of research themes. A field view enables questions about the distribution of research objects in the topic space, while a network view enables questions about connections between research objects or about their centrality. Our work contributes to spatialization theory a systematic choice of spaces informed by core concepts of spatial information. Its application to the design of library discovery tools offers two distinct and intuitive ways to gain insights into the thematic relatedness of research objects, regardless of the disciplinary terms used to describe them.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Information systems → Digital libraries and archives
  • Information systems → Search interfaces
  • Information systems → Document topic models
Keywords
  • spatialization
  • core concepts of spatial information
  • information discovery

Metrics

  • Access Statistics
  • Total Accesses (updated on a weekly basis)
    0
    PDF Downloads
    0
    Metadata Views

Supplementary Materials

References

  1. Christopher Alexander. A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction. Oxford university Press, 1977. Google Scholar
  2. Crystal Ji-Hye Bae. Representations of an urban neighborhood: residents' cognitive boundaries of Koreatown, Los Angeles. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015. Google Scholar
  3. Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier de Araújo Neto Ribeiro. Modern information retrieval. New York: ACM Press; Harlow, England: Addison-Wesley, 2011. Google Scholar
  4. Nicholson Baker. Discards. The New Yorker, page 64–86, April 1994. Google Scholar
  5. Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure, Matthew Gamble, Carole Goble, and Iain Buchan. Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge. In The Future of the Web for Collaborative Science (FWCS 2010). Nature Precedings, 2010. Google Scholar
  6. David M Blei, Andrew Y Ng, and Michael I Jordan. Latent dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3(Jan):993-1022, 2003. Google Scholar
  7. Katy Börner, Richard Klavans, Michael Patek, Angela M Zoss, Joseph R Biberstine, Robert P Light, Vincent Larivière, and Kevin W Boyack. Design and update of a classification system: The UCSD map of science. PloS one, 7(7):e39464, 2012. Google Scholar
  8. André Bruggmann and Sara I Fabrikant. How to visualize the geography of Swiss history. In Proceedings of the AGILE'2014 International Conference on Geographic Information Science,. AGILE Digital Editions, 2014. Google Scholar
  9. André Bruggmann, Marco M Salvini, and Sara Fabrikant. Cartograms of self-organizing maps to explore user-generated content. In 26th International Cartographic Conference, pages 25-30, 2013. Google Scholar
  10. Sara I Fabrikant. Spatialized browsing in large data archives. Transactions in GIS, 4(1):65-78, 2000. Google Scholar
  11. Sara I Fabrikant, Daniel R Montello, and David M Mark. The distance-similarity metaphor in region-display spatializations. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 26(4):34-44, 2006. Google Scholar
  12. Sara I Fabrikant, Daniel R Montello, Marco Ruocco, and Richard S Middleton. The distance-similarity metaphor in network-display spatializations. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 31(4):237-252, 2004. Google Scholar
  13. Peter Gärdenfors. Semantics. In Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought. MIT Press, 2000. Google Scholar
  14. Reginald G Golledge. Primitives of spatial knowledge. In Cognitive Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction for Geographic Information Systems, pages 29-44. Springer, 1995. Google Scholar
  15. Marti Hearst. User interfaces and visualization. Modern information retrieval, pages 257-323, 1999. Google Scholar
  16. Yingjie Hu, Krzysztof Janowicz, Grant McKenzie, Kunal Sengupta, and Pascal Hitzler. A linked-data-driven and semantically-enabled journal portal for scientometrics. In International Semantic Web Conference, pages 114-129. Springer, 2013. Google Scholar
  17. Teuvo Kohonen. Learning vector quantization. In Self-Organizing Maps, pages 175-189. Springer, 1995. Google Scholar
  18. Werner Kuhn. Handling data spatially: Spatializating user interfaces. In Advances in GIS research II: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, volume 2, page 13B, 1996. Google Scholar
  19. Werner Kuhn. Core concepts of spatial information for transdisciplinary research. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 26(12):2267-2276, 2012. Google Scholar
  20. Sara Lafia, Jon Jablonski, Werner Kuhn, Savannah Cooley, and Antonio Medrano. Spatial discovery and the research library. Transactions in GIS, 20(3):399-412, 2016. Google Scholar
  21. Elizabeth A Leicht, Gavin Clarkson, Kerby Shedden, and Mark Newman. Large-scale structure of time evolving citation networks. The European Physical Journal B, 59(1):75-83, 2007. Google Scholar
  22. Alan M MacEachren. How maps work: representation, visualization, and design. Guilford Press, 2004. Google Scholar
  23. Grant D McKenzie. A temporal approach to defining place types based on user-contributed geosocial content. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015. Google Scholar
  24. Daniel R Montello, Sara I Fabrikant, Marco Ruocco, and Richard S Middleton. Testing the first law of cognitive geography on point-display spatializations. In International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, pages 316-331. Springer, 2003. Google Scholar
  25. Mark Newman. Networks. Oxford University Press, 2018. Google Scholar
  26. Joan Nunes. Geographic space as a set of concrete geographical entities. In Cognitive and linguistic aspects of geographic space, pages 9-33. Springer, 1991. Google Scholar
  27. Adam Rabinowitz, Ryan Shaw, Sarah Buchanan, Patrick Golden, and Eric Kansa. Making sense of the ways we make sense of the past: The PeriodO project. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 59(2):42-55, 2016. Google Scholar
  28. David Sinton. The inherent structure of information as a constraint to analysis: Mapped thematic data as a case study. Harvard papers on geographic information systems, 1978. Google Scholar
  29. André Skupin. The world of geography: Visualizing a knowledge domain with cartographic means. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(suppl 1):5274-5278, 2004. Google Scholar
  30. André Skupin and Sara I Fabrikant. Spatialization Methods: A Cartographic Research Agenda for Non-geographic Information Visualization. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 30(2):99-119, 2003. Google Scholar
  31. Terence R Smith and James Frew. Alexandria digital library. Communications of the ACM, 38(4):61-62, 1995. Google Scholar
  32. Richard T Snodgrass. Temporal databases. In Theories and methods of spatio-temporal reasoning in geographic space, pages 22-64. Springer, 1992. Google Scholar
  33. Dagobert Soergel. The rise of ontologies or the reinvention of classification. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12):1119-1120, 1999. Google Scholar
  34. Waldo R Tobler. A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic geography, 46(sup1):234-240, 1970. Google Scholar
  35. James A Wise. The ecological approach to text visualization. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(13):1224-1233, 1999. Google Scholar
Questions / Remarks / Feedback
X

Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing


Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2024 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH Imprint Privacy Contact