Maps of computer science

We describe a practical approach for visual exploration of research papers. Specifically, we use the titles of papers from the DBLP database to create what we call maps of computer science (MoCS). Words and phrases from the paper titles are the cities in the map, and countries are created based on word and phrase similarity, calculated using co-occurence. With the help of heatmaps, we can visualize the profile of a particular conference or journal over the base map. Similarly, heatmap profiles can be made of individual researchers or groups such as a department. The visualization system also makes it possible to change the data used to generate the base map. For example, a specific journal or conference can be used to generate the base map and then the heatmap overlays can be used to show the evolution of research topics in the field over the years. As before, individual researchers or research group profiles can be visualized using heatmap overlays over a specific journal or conference base map. We outline a modular and extensible system for term extraction using natural language processing techniques, and show the applicability of methods of information retrieval to calculation of term similarity and creation of a topic map. The system is available at mocs.cs.arizona.edu.