Every lit review I perform I think to myself, "there's got to be a better way... this is just so inefficient." Given the progression of academic literature over time, with twists and turns and breakouts into specialized topics, it is really difficult for me to properly picture the process and current state of knowledge on any given topic. I started speaking with a data scientist here at IU today about the topic, but usually find that any "new" ideas that I have were previously addressed by somebody much smarter. So I would like to know if there are currently any efforts along these lines so I don't waste time trying to reinvent the wheel. Heaven knows I need that time for lit reviews...
I use Qiqqa to show me a "Brainstorm" of the themes in my library of papers. The hubs are themes and their nodes are the documents and the lines are the links. Qiqqa has an Auto Arrange button which can be turned on and off. When it is on, it automatically arranges the closely allied PDFs close together. When it is off, you can drag the PDFs to where you want them on the screen, and their links are automatically redrawn.
Clicking on a node opens the document to read and annotate and produce a report on your annotations.
Dear Dr P. Hibbard,
There are quite a few strategies that can be used for data visualization in academic literature review.
A good place to start will be CiteSpace. It is a tool for visualizing patterns and trends in scientific Literature developed by Dr Chaomei Chen at Drexel University.
Kindly refer to this website for more details http://bit.ly/2H8T1yS.
Hope this helps with your work.
Best regards,
BBN
Thank you both for your answers. I apologize for taking so long to respond. This semester has got me at full capacity.
