Uncovering the Latent Underlying Domains of a Research Field: Knowledge Visualization Revealed

This paper illustrates how to clarify a new research topic - knowledge visualization - in terms of analyzing a vast amount of citations related to this field. The study presents a method that may help scholars who are interested in an inter-disciplinary and not-well-understood research area, such as knowledge visualization by revealing for them the underlying disciplines that a particular research is based upon. Key papers relevant to the research in question are also identified that may help researchers gain an overview of the field. The method discussed in this paper is generic in nature and generally applicable to other research topics