Mapping Chemistry

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Professor Katy Boerner of the University of Indiana and Dr. Kevin Boyack of Sandia National Laboratories are supported with a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) from the Analytical and Surface Chemistry Program to study the interconnections between chemistry, biochemistry and the life sciences and their evolution in time. The idea is to utilize advanced data mining and visualization techniques to analyze citation links among papers in the approximately 1300 journals related to chemistry, biochemistry and the life sciences over the past 30 years. Knowledge domain maps will be employed to communicate the growth of both fields of science over time as well as their inter-citations patterns. The work plan includes data cleaning and parsing, mapping and analyzing the structure of the domains, identification of interdisciplinary information producers and consumers, diffusion of information studies, and validation in cooperation with domain experts in chemistry and the life sciences.This proof-of-concept project will create baseline visualizations that show the potential of knowledge domain mapping techniques to better inform decisions on programs that require accurate knowledge of the current science and technology infrastructure. New opportunities in the interdisciplinary areas between chemistry and biology merit study in order for the research community to evaluate the best next steps. This project will support graduate students in a research university/research lab collaboration. The activity is timely, as the development and utilization of visualizations is facilitated by the explosion of information available digitally, the decreasing cost of storage and computing power, the development of fast graphics processors, as well as expanding connectivity between systems.