Timeline mode and hover effect
In short: Click the Timeline button (clock icon) at the bottom of the right-hand panel. A year slider appears at the bottom of the map. Drag it back to see the map as it stood in an earlier year; drag it to the latest year to see the whole map again. On keyword and term maps, terms appear from the year they were first used. On other maps, items appear by the average year of their publications. The Hover effect button next to it highlights a node's neighbors when you point at it.
Turn on the timeline
- Open a map in the Research Maps tab.
- At the bottom of the right-hand panel, click the clock button (tooltip "Timeline off (click to enable)").
- Wait if you see "Reading publication years…". Keyword and term maps load their year-by-year data the first time.
- Drag the slider at the bottom of the map. The earliest year is on the left, and the selected year is shown on the right.
- To turn it off, click the clock button again ("Timeline on (click to disable)").
While the slider is before the latest year, the map overview panel shows an "Up to year" chip under View.
How the timeline decides what to show
| Map type | What the slider does |
|---|---|
| Keyword Co-occurrence and Term Co-occurrence | Shows the map as it stood in the selected year. Terms appear from the year they first appeared, are sized by their count up to that year, and link only once they have shared a publication. Betweenness, closeness and eigenvector centrality stay at their whole-corpus values. |
| All other types | Shows items whose average (mean) publication year is at or before the selected year. Items with no year always show. |
On keyword and term maps the slider runs from the earliest to the latest publication year in the corpus. On other maps it runs from the earliest to the latest average year, and stretches to the current year if the latest is a few years back.
Display thresholds are applied after the timeline. With a Nodes limit of 100, the 1995 view shows the top 100 terms of 1995, not today's top 100 with later ones hidden.
Messages you may see
| Message | Meaning |
|---|---|
| "Reading publication years…" | SciNodes is loading each term's years. |
| "All items are from year" | Everything on the map has the same year, so there's no slider. |
| "mean year" next to the slider | This keyword or term map is using average years instead of first appearance, because the map is too large for a year-by-year view, no publication carries a year, or the data couldn't load. Point at the slider bar to see which. |
Hover effect
The Hover effect button sits next to the clock button. It is on by default.
- On (tooltip "Hover effect on (click to disable)"): pointing at a node highlights it and the nodes it links to. Pointing at an edge highlights its two ends.
- Off ("Hover effect off (click to enable)"): nothing changes as you move the pointer. Useful when presenting or taking screenshots.
Clicking still selects nodes and edges either way. See Selecting, merging and excluding.
Tips
- To spot emerging themes, open a term map, turn on the timeline and step forward a few years at a time. Watch for clusters that appear late and grow fast.
- Your slider position is remembered with the map's other display settings.
- Use Export while the slider is set to save a figure of that year.
FAQ
Why does the slider start at the latest year?
The latest year shows the whole map. Drag left to go back in time.
Why don't node sizes change on my citation map?
On map types other than keyword and term co-occurrence, the timeline only hides items whose average year is later than the slider. Sizes stay as they are.
Why did a term disappear when I moved the slider back?
It hadn't appeared in any publication in your corpus by that year. Terms that first appeared later are hidden until the slider reaches their first year.
Does the timeline change my map?
No. It only changes what's displayed. Move the slider to the latest year or turn the timeline off to see everything.