In this study, CiteSpace-a key visual analytic tool is used to trace the emerging trends, temporal patterns, and development in the domain of “social networks.” To this end, we use a methodology involving the use of complex networks to visually analyze recent data from WoS in the social network domain. We took bibliographic records from the period of 2001 to 2018 and applied analysis on the data. We have visualized co-citation networks of cited references and journals, collaboration networks of authors, institutions, and countries and co-occurrence networks of keywords and subject categories. We have identified key turning points, pivot nodes, landmark publications, central articles, active articles, key journals, most productive and influential organizations, active organizations, core countries, central countries, most productive countries, popular keywords, central keywords, active keywords, key subject categories, central subject categories, and bursty subject categories. Additionally, major clusters in the cited reference co-citation network are also revealed. A future research may conduct a visual analysis of hybrid networks, such as author-country network, institution-country network, author-institution network, author-document network, and document-category network.

Chapter Contents:

• 12.1 Introduction
• 12.2 Background
• 12.2.1 Social networks—an overview
• 12.2.2 Citation networks
• 12.2.3 Co-citation networks
• 12.2.4 Bibliographic coupling
• 12.2.5 Coauthorship networks
• 12.2.6 Co-occurrence networks
• 12.3 Materials and methods
• 12.3.1 Data collection
• 12.3.2 CiteSpace—a science mapping tool
• 12.4 Results and discussion
• 12.4.1 Cited-references co-citation network analysis
• 12.4.1.1 Identification of largest cluster in cited references
• 12.4.2 Authors collaboration network analysis
• 12.4.3 Institution collaboration network analysis
• 12.4.4 Country collaboration network analysis
• 12.4.5 Keywords co-occurrence network analysis
• 12.4.6 Category co-occurrence network analysis
• 12.4.7 Journal co-citation network analysis
• 12.5 Summary of results
• 12.6 Conclusions and future work
• References

Inspec keywords: data analysis; complex networks; citation analysis; data visualisation; social networking (online); pattern clustering

Other keywords: keywords co-occurrence networks; institutions collaboration networks; authors collaboration networks; temporal patterns; cited journals; bibliographic records; scientometric visual survey; visual analytic tool; subject categories co-occurrence networks; cited references; countries collaboration networks; co-citation networks visualization; emerging trends; complex networks; social networks; Web of Science; CiteSpace; WoS data; hybrid networks

Subjects: Information analysis and indexing; Graphics techniques; Information networks