Feature

pubs.acs.org/ac

Bibliometric Mapping: Eight Decades of Analytical Chemistry, With

Special Focus on the Use of Mass Spectrometry
In this Feature we use automatic bibliometric mapping tools to visualize the history of analytical
chemistry from the 1920s until the present. In particular, we have focused on the application of mass
spectrometry in dierent elds. The analysis shows major shifts in research focus and use of mass
spectrometry. We conclude by discussing the application of bibliometric mapping and visualization
tools in analytical chemists research.
Cathelijn J. F. Waaijer*, and Magnus Palmblad

Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University, P.O. Box 905,
2300 AX Leiden, The Netherlands

Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics, Leiden University Medical Center, 2333 ZA Leiden, The Netherlands
S Supporting Information
*

closely mirror each other. Hence, citation networks are able to

show structures in knowledge ows.
Ipso facto citation networks have a temporal aspect: a
publication can only refer to earlier published work. However,
the temporal aspect is often not explicit in citation networks as
time is not explicitly shown in the visual representation of the
networks. Exceptions include main path analysis for citation
networks2 and the HistCite3 and CitNetExplorer software tools.4
All of these show chronological maps of the main lines of
research through time, but by means of dierent methods.
Although citation networks do represent an underlying
structure of (elds of) scientic knowledge, they do not directly
represent the content of papers. To this end, co-word maps can
be constructed. In this approach terms are extracted from papers
(e.g., from titles and abstracts) and for each pair of terms the
number of papers in which they both occur is determined. Terms
that appear often together are likely to concern the same subject
matter, whereas terms that never appear together are unlikely to
be related subject-wise. Counting the co-occurrences for every
pair of terms yields a co-occurrence matrix of terms. Further steps
include the normalization of this matrix and its visualization.57
In this Feature we use co-word and citation networks of
dierent bodies of documents concerning analytical chemistry to
show shifts in research topics within this eld. Special attention
is given to a method that became increasingly important in
analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry (MS).

ibliometrics is the study of interrelated bodies of documents, a prime example being the scientic literature. One
of its best known applications is the comparative evaluation of
countries, universities, research institutes, and individual
researchers, but it may also be used for other purposes, such as
gaining a better understanding of a elds structure or determining developments in research topics. It is the latter application that we will highlight in this Feature, by using automatic
bibliometric mapping tools to map developments within analytical chemistry.
Compared to more traditional historical methods, automatic
bibliometric mapping of scientic literature has the advantage of
relative ease and low laboriousness. Furthermore, the eld structure is established by (almost) automatic methods, producing a
more objective result than manual mapping could.
Mapping of networks visualizes multiple items (nodes) and
their underlying relationships (edges). The nodes can be different entities, e.g., authors, journals, or key terms occurring in
research papers. In addition, the edges can be based on dierent
types of data, e.g., in a network of authors one could determine
which authors co-author papers (a co-authorship network) or
who cites whom (a citation network).
The rst bibliometric maps were manually constructed citation networks.1 Gareld, Sher, and Torpie studied a book on the
history of genetics and compared the dependencies between
dierent studies as described by the author to the citational
patterns between the studies, and found that the two methods
2015 American Chemical Society

EVOLUTION OF TOPICS IN ANALYTICAL

CHEMISTRY 19292012
In this study we use three sources of data as input for bibliometric
analysis (Figure 1). The rst is this journal, founded in 1929
as Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Analytical Edition and
renamed to Analytical Chemistry in 1947. Most if not all
scientometric studies employing mapping methods to analyze
the development of research elds have used titles and abstracts
obtained from large bibliographic databases, of which the best
Published: March 6, 2015
4588

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry

A glossary of the discussed terms, techniques, and software

tools is given in Table 1.
First, we constructed co-word maps of the eld of analytical
chemistry in each decade: 19291940, 19411950, 19511960,
19611970, 19711980, 19811990, 19912000, and 2001
2012 and visualized these in the software VOSviewer (click
on a decade to download the corresponding map as an interactive
Java application; JavaScript 6 or higher required).9 On these
maps, terms that occur together often are positioned close
to each other, whereas terms that co-occur less often are
positioned further apart. Furthermore, clustering of terms into
four to eight clusters with dierent colors is applied using an
algorithm that nds the clustering solution that ts the cooccurrences between the dierent terms best (modularity-based
clustering).10
The 19291940 map shows four dierent clusters:
apparatuses (in green), gases (in pink), inorganic chemistry (in
red), and industrial applications, hydrocarbons, and food analysis
(in cyan) (Figure 2). For the other decades, the description of the
clusters is given in Table 2. The maps show that inorganic
chemistry (red) has been an important topic within analytical
chemistry for a long time; from 1929 until 1990 there were one or
more clusters on inorganic chemistry. In the 19912000 period
it was merged with the topics of electrochemistry and sensors.
Much attention was given to (the development of) dierent
apparatuses between 1929 and 1980 (green). A cluster on
general and editorial issues can be found in almost every period
(yellow). Topics that have developed over time include
electrochemistry, chromatography, and mass spectrometry.
Electrochemistry shows up as its own cluster in the 1951
1960 period (sea green), but terms relating to the subject can also
be found in the inorganic chemistry and metals cluster from
1941. This suggests the topic of electrochemistry has developed
from inorganic chemistry and metals to form its own subeld.
Chromatography is apparent in the maps from the 19511960
period onward (cyan); mass spectrometry from the 19711980
period. The maps suggest the widespread use of mass spectrometry in analytical chemistry primarily developed through its
coupling to chromatography (cyan); for the 19711980 period
terms relating to mass spectrometry can be discerned in the
maps, but the cluster is still dominated by chromatographic
techniques and applications. However, from the 19811990
period, mass spectrometry broke o and formed its own subeld
(blue). Finally, from 2001 a cluster on separations and microuidics emerged (mustard). This cluster also contains terms
relating to theory and simulations (of such microuidic systems).
Next, we analyzed the development and use of a number of
techniques within analytical chemistry. As a proxy, we determined how many articles mentioned the technique in their titles
during the 19292012 period. It is important to note that this is
only a proxy and as we only look for the mention of techniques in
the article titles, there is bias toward novel uses and development
of the technique.
This approach shows that titration techniques reached their
publication peak in the 1950s, gas chromatography in the 1960s,
and liquid chromatography in the 1980s (Figure 3). Of these
techniques, only the latter was still mentioned in the titles of over
5% of papers published in the 20012012 period. On the other
hand, microuidics is an example of a technology not mentioned
before 1990 that has really taken o in this 20012012 period.
A technique not mentioned to a great extent in the titles of
Analytical Chemistry papers is nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR), despite the fact that according to historical studies, it

Figure 1. Overview of data and methods. The rst data source was all
articles published in Analytical Chemistry between 1929 and 2012. Titles
were extracted from metadata in XML-format and these titles were used
to nd the start of each article on the scanned and OCRed rst pages of
each article. By nding the start of each article the abstracts could be
extracted. For 19962012, the abstracts were available in XML-format
and extracted from these les. Titles and abstracts were used to make coword maps using the VOSviewer and to determine the use of several
techniques. The second data source was the Centre for Science and
Technology Studies (CWTS) version of the Web of Science, which
applies the NOWT classication to group journals into scientic elds.
This source was used to determine the contribution of dierent scientic
elds in MS research and determine the relative use of MS in each
scientic eld. The third source was also the Web of Science, but the
online version (Web of Knowledge), which holds the metadata of
scientic articles going back to 1945. This source was used to construct a
longitudinal citation network of MS research.

known are Web of Science (WoS), founded in 1964 by Gareld

as the Science Citation Index and acquired by Thomson Reuters
in 1992, and Scopus, launched in 2004 by Elsevier. However,
abstracts were not regularly included before 1990. To map the
evolution of research topics within analytical chemistry over a
long period, it was therefore impossible to use ready-to-use
databases such as WoS or Scopus. Instead we extracted the titles
and abstracts of all Analytical Chemistry papers published
between 1929 and 2013, using this journal as a proxy for
the eld of analytical chemistry.8 A detailed description of the
abstract extraction procedure, and of the other methods used in
this paper, can be found in the Supporting Information.
4589

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry

Figure 2. Evolution of the eld of analytical chemistry. Maps based on all texts published in Analytical Chemistry except for advertisements (19291995)
or on all articles, letters, and reviews published in Analytical Chemistry (19962012). The colors depict the cluster the term belongs to (cf. Table 2). The
size of the circle is proportional to the number of occurrences. The distance of two terms on the map reects the relatedness of the two terms, i.e., how
often they co-occur.

Whereas between 1929 and 1940 none of the Analytical

Chemistry papers mentioned mass spectrometry in their title,
the fraction of papers that did increased to 18% in the 2001
2012 period (Figure 3), revealing a continuous increase in
relative importance of mass spectrometry in analytical chemistry.

became an important physics-based analytical method in the

second half of the 20th century.11 Presumably, chemical research
using NMR was published in journals other than Analytical
Chemistry. As the co-word maps already suggested, the mention
of mass spectrometry increased throughout the entire period.
4590

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry
Table 1. Glossary of Terms, Techniques and Software Tools
Bibliometrics
Citation network
CiteSpaceII
CitNetExplorer
Mapping
Clustering
Co-word map
HistCite
Sci2
VOSviewer
Mapping
Clustering
Web of Science (WoS)

The quantitative study of literatures as they are reected in bibliographies22

Network of citation relations between items (e.g., publications, authors or journals)
Software tool developed by Chen for detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientic literature5
Software tool developed by Van Eck and Waltman for visualizing and analyzing citation networks of scientic publications4
Positioning of a subset of the publications in a citation network (usually selected based on their citation frequency) in a two-dimensional map
in which the vertical dimension indicates time (i.e., the year of publication) and the horizontal dimension indicates the closeness of
publications in the citation network.
Partitioning of the publications in a citation network into a number of groups (clusters). Publications assigned to the same group are closely
connected to each other in the citation network.
Map of words (or terms), usually extracted from the titles and abstracts of scientic publications, showing the co-occurrence relations of the
words (i.e., the number of publications in which two words occur together).
Software tool developed by Eugene Gareld to generate chronological maps of scientic literature based on WoS input3
Software tool developed by a team led by Borner and Boyack that is a modular toolset specically designed for the study of science. It supports
the temporal, geospatial, topical, and network analysis and visualization of scholarly datasets at the micro (individual), meso (local), and
macro (global) levels.
Software tool developed by Van Eck and Waltman for analyzing bibliometric networks,9 in particular networks based on citation and cooccurrence relations
Positioning of the items in a network in a two-dimensional map in such a way that strongly connected items tend to be located close to each
other while weakly connected items tend to be located further away from each other. The horizontal and vertical axes have no special
meaning. Only the relative distances between items carry meaning in a map.
Partitioning of the items in a network into a number of groups (clusters). Items assigned to the same group are closely connected to each other
in the network.
Multidisciplinary bibliographic database produced by Thomson Reuters

Table 2. Main Topics in Analytical Chemistry (cf. Figure 2)

Color

Description

Color

Description

Description

Color

Description

19511960
Cyan
Chromatography
Sea green Electrochemistry

19611970
Cyan
Chromatography
Red
Inorganic chemistry

Red

Red

Inorganic chemistry: metals

Sea green Electrochemistry

Green

Apparatuses

Yellow

Yellow

General/editorial

Cyan

19411950
Green
Apparatuses
Pink
Inorganic chemistry:
gases/halogens
Inorganic chemistry
Red
Inorganic chemistry:
metals
Industrial applications,
Dark blue Organic and food
hydrocarbons and food
chemistry
Yellow
General/editorial
Cyan
Industrial applications
and hydrocarbons

Color

19291940
Green
Apparatuses
Pink
Gases

19711980
Cyan
Chromatography

19811990
Yellow
General/editorial

Red

Sea green Electrochemistry

Inorganic chemistry

Sea green Electrochemistry

Red

Inorganic chemistry

Yellow

General/editorial

Cyan

Chromatography

Green
Pink

Apparatuses
Gases

Blue

Mass spectrometry

General/editorial and
informatics

19912000
Cyan
Chromatography

20012012
Sea green Detection, electrochemistry and
(bio)sensors
Purple
Electrophoresis
Brown
Small molecules and
quantitation
Sea green Inorganic chemistry, electrochemistry Blue
Mass spectrometry
and (bio)sensors
Yellow
General/editorial
Mustard Separations, microuidics, and
theory and simulations
Blue
Mass spectrometry and proteomics

Our bibliometric ndings are by and large in accordance with

historical studies on the development of analytical chemistry.
Historical studies have also shown that analytical chemistry has
undergone major changes during the 20th century. The main
change has been a shift of focus from chemistry- to physics-based
analytical methods.11,12 Before the instrument era, analytical
chemists would rst have to separate their compound of interest
from the sample using chemical reactions, after which they could
qualitatively identify the elements present in the compound. The
rst (now called classical) methods of quantitative determination involved gravimetric and volumetric analysis. In the 1940s
and the early 1950s, these methods were still the most used,
together with colorimetric methods.13,14 The classical methods
were still used in the late 1950s and 1960s but increasingly
supplanted by chromatography, electrophoresis, and MS.15,16

Another development during the investigated period was the

decrease in the share of papers on inorganic and organic
chemistry due to a surge in biochemical research, a nding
mirrored in our maps.

DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF MASS

SPECTROMETRY
As mass spectrometry became an important technique for analytical chemistry, we now zoom in on the use of this technique.
Co-words maps of all Analytical Chemistry papers mentioning
MS in their title or abstract were constructed (Figure 4). Topics
of clusters in the map are described in Table 3. The maps show a
shift from analysis of smaller molecules (gases, hydrocarbons,
metals) and isotope analysis to the analysis of larger and more
complicated molecules (polymers, proteins). Main topics in the
4591

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry
19411960 period are hydrocarbons, structural analysis,
quantitation, and gases (again, click the period to download an
interactive Java application of the map). The 19611970 and

19711980 periods are characterized by the emergence of

software and by the development of apparatuses and interfaces.
In addition, the 19711980 period saw the establishment of
chromatography and chemical ionization as important ancillary
technologies. Terms relating to secondary ion mass spectrometry
(SIMS) can rst be distinguished for the 19711980 period (as
part of a cluster that also includes quantitation) and also formed a
cluster in the 19811990 period (also including laser and plasma
desorption) and the 19912000 period (also including the
analysis of polymers). Another main topic that emerged in the
19912000 period is proteomics. In this period it formed a
cluster with matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI)
while also being positioned close to the cluster on electrospray
ionization, quadrupoles, ion traps, Fourier transform ion
cyclotron resonance (FTICR), and tandem mass spectrometry
(MS/MS) but became its own cluster in the 20012012 period.
MALDI then formed a cluster with imaging mass spectrometry.
The main nding from these co-word maps is again the shift
from the analysis of simple to more complex molecules, as was

Figure 3. Use of dierent techniques in Analytical Chemistry. Search

terms used were mass spectro*, nuclear magnetic resonance or
NMR, titration, gas chromato*, liquid chromato*, and microuid*, searched against the titles of Analytical Chemistry papers.

Figure 4. Evolution of MS within analytical chemistry based on co-word maps. Maps based on all texts with the term mass spectro* in the title and/or
abstract published in Analytical Chemistry except for advertisements (19291995) or on all articles, letters, and reviews with mass spectro* published
in Analytical Chemistry (19962012). The colors depict the cluster the term belongs to (cf. Table 3).
4592

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry
Table 3. Main Topics in Mass Spectrometry within the Field of Analytical Chemistry (cf. Figure 4)
Color

Description

19411960
Yellow
Purple

General and editorial

Hydrocarbons

Dark blue

Structural analysis

Brown
Pink
Gray

Quantitation
Gases
Nondiscernible

19811990
Brown

Color

Description

Color

19611970
Mustard
Software
Green-brown Sample preparation, separations and
derivatization
Purple
Hydrocarbons and organic chemistry

19711980
Cyan
Brown

Green
Blue
Red
Yellow

Apparatuses and interfaces

General MS
Inorganic chemistry, metals and isotope ratio MS
Editorial

Sea green

Compound quantication

19912000
Dark blue

MALDI-TOF and proteomics

Cyan

Chromatography

Purple

Sea green

Chemical ionization

Red

Pink

FAB, FD/mass analyzers and

MS/MS
Green-brown Secondary ion mass
spectrometry, laser desorption
and plasma desorption
Gray
Nondiscernible

Sea green

Green

20012012
Blue

Chromatography, quantitation and isotope ratio

MS
SIMS, surfaces and polymers

Sea green

Electrospray ionization, quadrupoles, ion traps,

FTICR and MS/MS

Green-brown

Brown

Dark blue

the case for analytical chemistry generally. The maps also provide
the likely explanation that enabled this shift: the improvement of equipment, interfaces and software, and especially the
development of new physical techniques. Examples are the
development of chemical ionization and SIMS in the 1970s, and
MALDI in the 1990s. In addition, joining of older techniques and
MS is evident from these maps, such as the incorporation of
chromatography in the 1970s. These developments in turn
enabled the applications of MS in a wider area of research, such as
proteomics (enabled by several ionization techniques) and
polymer analysis (enabled by SIMS), which is also visible in the
maps.
Next, we set out to estimate how often MS was used over time
in all research elds, insofar as they are covered by the WoS
database. We determined how many articles in the WoS had the
term mass spectrometry in their title or abstract. The plotted
graph of this absolute number shows a large increase from 1981
until 2013 (Figure 5a, pink plot). The graph is discontinuous
between 1990 and 1991 due to abstracts being regularly included
into the WoS database only from 1991, including for journals
publishing many papers using MS, such as Journal of Biological
Chemistry, Journal of Chromatography, and Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry. After the 1991 discontinuity, the
increase in use of MS is still considerable. In 1991, about 2 600
papers on or including MS were published; by 2013, this gure
had increased to around 16 000. However, the WoS database
expanded tremendously between 1981 and 2013, due to an
increasing number of journals being covered and each journal on
average publishing more articles per year (Figure S-1 in the
Supporting Information). Therefore, we also determined the
relative number of articles with MS in their titles or abstracts.
This analysis shows that MS was indeed increasingly used in
relative terms (Figure 5a, yellow).
This raises the question which scientic disciplines work on
(and with) MS. We determined which disciplines mainly contribute to research involving MS. To this end we used the
NOWT classication of journals, which classies journals

Description
Chromatography
Compound quantication and
secondary ion MS
Apparatuses and interfaces
(incl. informatics)
Chemical ionization

MALDI and imaging mass

spectrometry
Direct analysis (DART etc.),
ESI and ICPMS
Quantitation (GCMS,
LCMS)
Sample preparation (labeling,
enrichment, purication)
Proteomics

according to scientic disciplines (see Table S-1 in the

Supporting Information for a complete list).17 This reveals that
most research using MS has been published in journals from the
chemistry, physics, and astronomy category (Figure 5b).18
However, the emphasis of these disciplines has decreased
over time as the use of MS in the life sciences increased
dramatically between 1991 and 2013. Furthermore, there
has been a slight decrease in the share of papers published in
engineering journals.
This analysis, however, only measures the share of scientic
disciplines in the total output of research using MS. Therefore,
we also determined to what extent MS was used per scientic
discipline. Results of the latter analysis show that the use of MS in
the chemistry, physics, and astronomy category has still been
increasing over the past 15 years, albeit slowly (Figure 5c). In
comparison, there has been a large increase in the use of MS
in the life sciences, from about 0.75% of all papers in life sciences
journals to over 2.5%. The use of MS in the medical sciences has
also increased, as it has in earth and environmental sciences, but
in the latter, the rate of growth has decreased. As mentioned
above, it is important to keep in mind that text mining from titles
and abstracts is more likely to pick up new applications or novel
technologies rather than routine, established use, where they may
only appear in the methods section.
Finally, we investigated which lines of research have been the
most important in research employing MS and which papers
have been most inuential. To this end, we visualized a
longitudinal citation network using CitNetExplorer.4 All articles,
reviews, and letters with the term mass spectrometry in the
title, abstract, or listed keywords published in the online version
of the WoS, along with their cited references, were included into
the analysis. The inclusion of cited references makes it possible to
also include scientic work that is not included in the WoS, such
as textbooks, older articles, and articles not employing MS but
cited by mass spectrometrists, in the citation network. For a
short explanation on mapping and clustering, see the glossary
(Table 1).
4593

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry

Figure 5. Use of mass spectrometry in scientic literature and by scientic discipline, 19812013. (a) Number of MS papers in WoS database. The
search term used was mass spectrometry, which was searched for in the title and/or the abstract. (b) Share of scientic disciplines in MS research.
(c) Percentage of papers using the term mass spectrometry in title and/or abstract, per scientic discipline. Scientic disciplines are based on NOWT
medium categories, fractionally counted.

extraction, Van den Dool and Kratzs on gas chromatography,

and Guenther et al.s on gas emission (Figure 5b), again
illustrating MS is frequently combined with other methods.
In conclusion, analysis of the scientic papers in which MS is
mentioned reveals a shift from development of the technology by
the physics and chemistry communities to application in the life,
medical, and earth and environmental sciences. This shift is
evident from a slight increase in the use, or further development,
of MS within physics and chemistry but a much larger increase
in the more applied elds. The most cited papers in research
applying MS are often not concerned with MS, but with
allied technologies, illustrating the interdisciplinary nature
of much of the research using MS. The results from this
bibliometric analysis trace the common historical narrative of
mass spectrometry, e.g., as described in Graysons Measuring
Mass: From Positive Rays to Proteins.19 This book also cites the
commercialization of mass spectrometers as the main enabling
factor behind the expansion of applications of MS. This
commercialization was rst fueled by the oil industry and the
Manhattan Project but later driven by a need for pharmaceutical
and environmental analysis.

The citation network displays 10 clusters, of which the largest

is on peptides and proteins (Figure 6). The network shows
a tightly knit group of clusters on peptides and proteins (dark
blue) and metabolites (orange) and part of a cluster on technical
aspects of MS (dark green). Clusters of research on carbohydrates (red) and lipids, plants and neonatal metabolism
(brown) are also quite closely related to this group. The food
analysis cluster (pink) is connected both to the aforementioned
metabolite cluster and to a cluster on environmental research
(purple). Further right on this map is part of the cluster on
surfaces and polymers (bright green); the other part on imaging
mass spectrometry is mapped more closely to the biological
group. Finally, there are discrete clusters on atmospheric and
geological science (cyan) and isotopes (yellow).
In addition we determined which research paper per cluster
is the most cited (excluding reviews and book chapters). This
analysis attempts to nd the main papers inuencing applications
of mass spectrometry in dierent elds. It turns out that for
a considerable number of clusters, the most cited research paper
is not one specically on MS, e.g., Laemmlis paper on protein
quantitation, Arthur and Pawliszyns on the solid phase
microextraction of organochlorides, Bligh and Dyers on lipid
4594

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry

Figure 6. Longitudinal citation network of mass spectrometry research, 19452013. The colors represent the cluster a publication belongs to the
colored numbers represent the cluster numbers in the table. Labels show the last name of the last author of a publication.

CONCLUSIONS
Bibliometric mapping reveals clear shifts in analytical chemistry
research topics from inorganic and (small-molecule) organic
chemistry to biochemistry and complex biomolecules. Furthermore, a sequence of new methods emerging and sometimes
replacing older ones is apparent in the time series analyses. It is
important to note that our ndings are, for the most part, neither
new nor even unexpected but rather support historical research
and the results from other bibliometric methods that have been
used to investigate the development of analytical chemistry.
However, we show here how these ndings can be obtained using
semiautomatic bibliometric mapping methods to visualize the
evolution of research elds in an unsupervised manner.

In addition, mapping by denition is a simplication, which

causes loss of information.20 For example, electrospray ionization
has arguably been a major development in the development of
MS.21 It was rst developed for recording mass spectra of large
biomolecules by Yamashita and Fenn already in 1984. However,
the terms electrospray ionization and ESI are not depicted
on our 19811990 maps on MS, but only from 1991 to 2000,
presumably because the number of occurrences had not reached
the set threshold of minimum occurrences for the 19811990
period. Hence, only the largest subelds are generally visible on
the map, whereas the smaller ones (that might actually hold the
most exciting developments) are not. Furthermore, the division
of terms into clusters is to some extent subject to the chosen
clustering parameters, making clustering dependent on a certain
subjectivity. Still, the main structure of a research eld is easily
mapped.
Bibliometric visualization tools may be useful to uncover
unexpected linkages to other elds and scientic literature as
well. Citation network visualization is useful to analyze how a
body of documents is related and which other work it draws
upon. The ability to uncover linkages in the scientic literature
may be especially of use when writing a review of the literature.
CitNetExplorer is a useful tool in this regard, as it can also show
references to articles not included in the input data.
In this work we used two dierent bibliometric visualization
tools that suited our purposes, VOSviewer and CitNetExplorer.4,9
However, there are many other mapping tools (also freely
available) that have more extensive functionality for other
purposes. Examples include CiteSpaceII and Sci2.5,6 CiteSpaceII

BIBLIOMETRIC VISUALIZATION TOOLS FOR YOUR

OWN RESEARCH
The use of bibliometric visualization tools is not limited to
historical analyses such as the one presented here. The tools can
also be used to obtain a comprehensive view of other research
elds. This is especially useful for junior researchers who are
getting started in the eld and would like to have a rst glance at
its structure. Furthermore, by charting time series new topics of
potential interest to the researcher can be found. Co-word maps
are especially well-suited to obtain an overview of a eld, as they
show the main terms used in that eld.
However, there are limitations to co-word analysis, e.g.,
researchers use dierent writing styles, and terminology,
homonyms and synonyms all aect the co-occurrence of terms.
4595

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596

Feature

Analytical Chemistry

(11) Reinhardt, C.; Shifting and Rearranging: Physical Methods and the
Transformation of Modern Chemistry; Science History Publications/
USA: Sagamore Beach, MA, 2006; pp 321.
(12) Baird, D. Ann. Sci. 1993, 50, 267290.
(13) Strong, F. C. Anal. Chem. 1947, 19, 968971.
(14) Fischer, R. B. Anal. Chem. 1956, 28, 9A14A.
(15) Brooks, R. R.; Smythe, L. E. Talanta 1975, 22, 495504.
(16) Berezkin, V. G.; Chernysheva, T. Y. J. Chromatogr. 1977, 141,
241246.
(17) Nederlands Observatorium van Wetenschap en Technologie.
Wetenschaps- en Technologie-Indicatoren 2010; Ministry of Education,
Culture and Science: The Hague, Netherlands, 2010; Supplementary
Table B.
(18) Most research using MS in this category has been published in
chemistry and physics journals, not in astronomy journals.
(19) American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Measuring Mass: From
Positive Rays to Proteins; Grayson, M. A., Ed.; Chemical Heritage Press:
Philadelphia, PA, 2002.
(20) van Eck, N. J. Methodological Advances in Bibliometric Mapping of
Science. Ph.D. Thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The
Netherlands, 2011; p 13.
(21) Braun, T.; Zsindely, S. TrAC, Trends Anal. Chem. 1992, 11, 307
309.
(22) White, H. D.; McCain, K. W. In Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology; Williams, M. E., Ed.; Elsevier: Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, 1989; pp 119186.
(23) Laemmli, U. K. Nature 1970, 227, 680685.
(24) Tanaka, K.; Waki, H.; Ido, Y.; Akita, S.; Yoshida, Y.; Matsuo, T.
Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom. 1988, 2, 151153.
(25) Arthur, C. L.; Pawliszyn, J. Anal. Chem. 1990, 62, 21452148.
(26) Matuszewski, B. K.; Constanzer, M. L.; Chavez-Eng, C. M. Anal.
Chem. 2003, 75, 30193030.
(27) Marechal, C. N.; Telouk, P.; Albarede, F. Chem. Geol. 1999, 156,
251273.
(28) Bligh, E. G.; Dyer, W. J. Can. J. Biochem. Physiol. 1959, 37, 911
917.
(29) van den Dool, H.; Kratz, P. D. J. Chromatogr. 1963, 11, 463471.
(30) Guenther, A.; Hewitt, C. N.; Erickson, D.; Fall, R.; Geron, C.;
Graedel, T.; Harley, P.; Klinger, L.; Lerdau, M.; Mckay, W. A.; Pierce, T.;
Scholes, B.; Steinbrecher, R.; Tallamraju, R.; Taylor, J.; Zimmerman, P. J.
Geophys. Res.: Atmos. 1995, 100, 88738892.
(31) Weibel, D.; Wong, S.; Lockyer, N.; Blenkinsopp, P.; Hill, R.;
Vickerman, J. C. Anal. Chem. 2003, 75, 17541764.
(32) Domon, B.; Costello, C. E. Glycoconjugate J. 1988, 5, 397409.

provides a built-in database for data handling as well as geospatial

analysis features. Sci2 has functionality for geospatial analysis and
network analysis, such as calculation of in-degree, k-core, and
community detection.

ASSOCIATED CONTENT

S Supporting Information
*

Additional information as noted in text. This material is available

free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*Phone: +31 71 527 6072. Fax: +31 527 3911. E-mail:

c.j.f.waaijer@cwts.leidenuniv.nl.
Notes

The authors declare no competing nancial interest.

Biographies
Cathelijn Waaijer works as a doctoral researcher at the Centre for
Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. She did her
M.Sc. in Biomedical Sciences and did a research project on the mass
spectrometric analysis of cartilage tumors at the Leiden University
Medical Center (LUMC).
Magnus Palmblad is Associate Professor at the LUMC Center for
Proteomics and Metabolomics specializing in clinical applications of and
informatics solutions for mass spectrometry based proteomics.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to express our gratitude to the American Chemical
Society for making data available for this study and technical
support. In particular, we would like to thank Catherine Boylan,
Emma Moore, David Martinsen, and Jerey Krugman. We also
thank Rob Marissen (LUMC) and Bjorn Victor (Institute for
Tropical Medicine, Antwerp) for technical assistance. Finally, we
would like to thank Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman (both
CWTS) and Michael Grayson for fruitful discussions.

REFERENCES

(1) Gareld, E.; Sher, I. H.; Torpie, R. J. The Use of Citation Data in
Writing the History of Science; Institute for Scientic Information Inc.:
Philadelphia, PA, 1964.
(2) Hummon, N. P.; Doreian, P. Soc. Networks 1989, 11, 3963.
(3) Garfield, E. J. Inf. Sci. 2004, 30, 119145.
(4) van Eck, N. J.; Waltman, L. J. Informetr. 2014, 8, 802823.
(5) Chen, C. M. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 2006, 57, 359377.
(6) Sci2 team. Science of Science (Sci2) Tool; Indiana University and
SciTech Strategies, https://sci2.cns.iu.edu, 2009.
(7) van Eck, N. J.; Waltman, L.; Dekker, R.; van den Berg, J. J. Am. Soc.
Inf. Sci. Technol. 2010, 61, 24052416.
(8) Naturally, the use of a single journal as a representation of a eld is
an oversimplication of all research in a eld. However, working with a
single journal also has clear advantages, such as the continuity of a single,
uninterrupted stream of publications in a journal managed by one
editorial board (which changes slowly over time), a nite number of
article types and formats and the practical possibility of accessing all
articles published over nearly a century. For 19291995, only scanned
rst pages of articles processed by Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) to TXT-les were available. Thus, we extracted n words after the
articles title, with n being the average abstract length for a ve-year
period. Therefore, a limitation of our study is that for 19291995 we
were not able to precisely extract abstracts, and that OCR errors were
present in the texts.
(9) van Eck, N. J.; Waltman, L. Scientometrics 2010, 84, 523538.
(10) Waltman, L.; van Eck, N. J.; Noyons, E. C. M. J. Informetr. 2010, 4,
629635.
4596

DOI: 10.1021/ac5040314
Anal. Chem. 2015, 87, 45884596