System development for research map visualisation

Finding a research gap is an important and difficult step in the research world. To find the research problem, one needs to read and analyze a lot of scientific articles. Although many systems and methods have been develop to assist the above process such as bibliographic analysis & visualization as well as scientific articles recommendation systems, almost all of them are limited to find relevant articles. A tool that helps researchers to get a bigger picture of research in a topic of interests is very desirable. This paper reports our effort in the development of research map visualizers, which we believe will be a useful tool for researchers. Assuming that the detail information about articles is available, the system can visualize a research map according to the user information needs. The user can specify the visualization parameters to explore the various ways of presenting a research map. The visualization parameters include selecting the information along ordinate and abscissa as well as the type of relation among articles. The system has been designed by considering usability and user experience goals. The usability testing for the system that has been conducted reveals that it can attain the goals of effectiveness, learnability, satisfying, being helpful and fun.