Visualizing the Topical Structure of the Medical Sciences: A Self-Organizing Map Approach

Study results demonstrate that it is possible to transform a very large document corpus into a map that is visually engaging and conceptually stimulating to subject experts from both inside and outside of the particular knowledge domain.

Abstract

Study results demonstrate that it is possible to transform a very large document corpus into a map that is visually engaging and conceptually stimulating to subject experts from both inside and outside of the particular knowledge domain. The challenges of dealing with a truly large corpus come to the fore and require embracing parallelization and use of supercomputing resources to solve otherwise intractable computational tasks. Among the envisaged future efforts are the creation of a highly interactive interface and the elaboration of the notion of this map of medicine acting as a base map, onto which other knowledge artifacts could be overlaid.