An integrated approach to author co-citation analysis

In ibis article, we describe a generic approach for tracking and visualising the structure of a knowledge domain based on author co-citation and co-citation patterns derived from citation databases. The goal is to summarise and synthesis latent structures of knowledge domains as reflected through scientific literature available on the Internet, in a wide range of digital libraries, and publishers' online outlets. We extend our work in visualising to a broader subject domain, namely the mass extinctions. The domain of the mass extinctions is visualised base on a citation analysis of articles appeared in the Web of Science. We illustrate how the integrated approach such as factor analysis and pathfinder network scaling are used to capture the research front of a knowledge domain. We discuss the results corroborate with our earlier work.