What are they?
Disciplinary Maps
A discipline is defined as a cluster of journals. We grouped over 16,000 journals into 554 disciplines using similarities in their lists of references and key terms.
A disciplinary map shows the major relationships between these disciplines, which are depicted as dots. Although the map shown above was actually first drawn on a sphere, here we show the Mercator projection of the spherical map. Thus, the right side of the map is connected to the left side.
Competency Maps
The 554 disciplines have been placed around a circle so that related disciplines are next to each other. Paradigms (defined on the right) are placed on the periphery of a circle so that paradigms in the same discipline are next to each other.
A circular map allows one to analyze the interdisciplinary strengths of researchers, labs, institutions, regions or nations.
The map shown above represent an overlay showing US vulnerabilities.
Paradigm Maps
A paradigm is the smallest possible cluster of related scientific documents. For example, 84,000 paradigms are needed to describe the micro-structure of research in 2007.
Paradigm maps show the relationships between a set of related paradigms.
The map shown above represents the over 400 paradigms associated with stem cell research. Paradigms are color coded to represent various characteristics, such as the broad set of field to which the paradigms belong.