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RPYS i/o: software demonstration of a web-based tool for the historiography and visualization of citation classics, sleeping beauties and research fronts

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Abstract

Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) and Multi-RPYS provide algorithmic approaches to reconstructing the intellectual histories of scientific fields. With this brief communication, we describe a technical advancement for developing research historiographies by introducing RPYS i/o, an online tool for performing standard RPYS and Multi-RPYS analyses interactively (at http://comins.leydesdorff.net/). The tool enables users to explore seminal works underlying a research field and to plot the influence of these seminal works over time. This suite of visualizations offers the potential to analyze and visualize the myriad of temporal dynamics of scientific influence, such as citation classics, sleeping beauties and the dynamics of research fronts. We demonstrate the features of the tool by analyzing—as an example—the references in documents published in the journal Philosophy of Science.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Lutz Bornmann and George Chacko for feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Applied Information Science, Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation, Arlington, VA, USA

    Jordan A. Comins

  2. Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, PO Box 15793, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Loet Leydesdorff

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  1. Jordan A. Comins
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  2. Loet Leydesdorff
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Correspondence to Jordan A. Comins.

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Comins, J.A., Leydesdorff, L. RPYS i/o: software demonstration of a web-based tool for the historiography and visualization of citation classics, sleeping beauties and research fronts. Scientometrics 107, 1509–1517 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1928-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1928-z

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