Research Fronts and Research Front Maps Descriptions

Research fronts are clusters of highly cited papers and research front maps are diagrammatic representations of the co-citation links among the highly cited papers that comprise the cluster. Fronts are selected from the Research Fronts section of Essential Science Indicators^SM from Thomson Reuters which is updated every two months. Some maps also link to author commentaries for specific papers.

Each circle represents a highly cited paper whose bibliographic information is displayed when the user clicks on the circle. The solid lines between circles represent the strongest co-citation links for each paper (that is, indicating that the papers are frequently cited together); weaker links are indicated by dashed lines. Papers close to each other on the map are generally more highly co-cited. The most recent paper(s) are indicated in pink or yellow depending on the map.

For additional information, see Methodology.

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