Time line visualization of research fronts

Research fronts, defined as clusters of documents that tend to cite a fixed, time invariant set of base documents, are plotted as time lines for visualization and exploration. Using a set of documents related to the subject of anthrax research, this article illustrates the construction, exploration, and interpretation of time lines for the purpose of identifying and visualizing temporal changes in research activity through journal articles. Such information is useful for presentation to members of expert panels used for technology forecasting.