Background to Project

In the ever-evolving landscape of academic research and innovation, understanding the performance of researchers, companies, and research institutes is crucial for fostering collaboration, identifying leading contributors, and pinpointing areas for growth. The ability to analyze and compare the output of various entities in the research space helps stakeholders—such as funding bodies, academic institutions, and industry leaders—make data-driven decisions that shape the future of research and development. However, measuring research performance is often a complex process, as it involves a variety of metrics such as the number of publications, citations, collaborations, and impact within a specific field.

To address this challenge, our project aims to develop a dynamic and interactive bubble chart visualization tool that effectively compares the publication performance of academic researchers, companies, and research institutes against their competitors. By transforming a diverse range of performance metrics into an easily digestible visual format, the bubble chart will allow users to quickly identify trends, recognize top performers, and assess how various players in the field are advancing in relation to their peers.

The chart will represent entities as bubbles, with the size and color of each bubble indicating key metrics such as the number of publications, citation impact, or the speed of publication over time. The positioning of these bubbles on the chart will reflect their relative performance, helping users to visually analyze and compare the performance of individual researchers or organizations. This tool will allow stakeholders to not only track the progression of specific entities but also to uncover patterns of success or underperformance within specific academic disciplines or research domains.

Moreover, the dynamic nature of the bubble chart will enable users to filter and zoom in on particular aspects of research performance, such as comparing entities within a specific geographic region, discipline, or time period. This added flexibility ensures that the chart can accommodate a wide range of user needs, whether they are academic administrators seeking to identify emerging leaders in their field or funding organizations aiming to allocate resources to the most promising projects. Through this visualization tool, we hope to bring clarity and transparency to the often-opaque world of research performance, empowering decision-makers to make more informed choices and driving greater innovation across the academic and commercial research sectors.

Latest Updates

Note: This visualisation is an early-stage development product intended for client and UX testing and feedback. Consequently, it is NOT deemed complete, and may have odd anomalies in functionalised interaction, transitioning and design.


• March 29th 2025: Initial new build of prototype.
• April 15th 2025: Better user experience, exhibited by: (1) prototype simplifed to reduced user interactions and functionality, (2) major issue fixed relating to incorrect panning habit after 'chart reset', (3) improved 'Reset Chart' functionality, (4) improved chart transitioning, (5) improved dimensions of base container SVG panel (6) improved 'Axis Change' functionality.

Possible Future Planned Improvements Additional Entity Selection Lists | Improved number notation suffix/formatting on axis tick labels

Intepreting the Visualisation

We use a bubble chart in this prototype to convey an entity's performance against their competitors, in the domain of scientific publishing. This prototype allows user to switch chart views between mapping number of total publications/citations over all time and these same variables over the past three years. Data are drawn from 'Dimensions'.

On initial loading, the chart displays the top entities based on their Field Citation Ratio (FCR) metric, out of a sample dataset of a few hundred companies. These are plotted on a traditional cartesian bubble chart, mapping 'Scholarly Output' (i.e. 'Number of Publications') on the independent x-axis against 'Total Number of Citations' on the dependent y-axis. Other key points to understand from this visual:

• The larger white outlined rectangle visually highlights the data extent of all entities in the associated topic-benchmarking table that this visual represents, with respect to the mapped 'Dimensions' variables.
• The smaller purple rectangle visually highlights the extent of only the selected entities with respect to the mapped 'Dimensions' variables and the full population represented by the larger white bounding rectangle.
• The two dashed lines mark the range midpoint of each 'Dimensions' attribute, specifically for the range represented by the full ingested entity population (in this case, a few hundred entities). These divide the area into reference quadrants, which may be used to judge relative performance of competing entities, and helps contextualize the positioning of individual entities (e.g. your company, your competitors) in relation to the full population.
• Users can zoom the chart space directly to the selected entities (purple rectangle) by clicking on 'Zoom Selected Entities' button. Users can then zoom chart back to the full entity population by clicking the same button, now labelled 'Zoom All Entities'
• Users can reset the chart by clicking the 'Reset Chart' button.
• Users can pan and zoom the chart using their mouse/trackpad.
• Users can define their own area within the chart to 'zoom to' by clicking on the 'Define Your Own Zoom Area'. This allows them to then click and drag the mouse cursor within the chart frame to define a bespoke 'rectangular' area to zoom to. 'Zoom' is then implemented on releasing the mouse cursor. Users can apply multiple, successive zoom rectangles between panning of the chart. Click the same button again (now labelled as 'Allow Chart Pan/Zoom' to return to being able to pan the chart. Users can cancel an operation to deifne your own zoom area mid-application by pressing the Escape (ESC) keyboard key.
• Users may add new entities to display on the displayed chart by clicking on the checkbox associated with specific continents on the first [red] selection list, or checkbox associated to a required entity on the second [red] multi-selection list,
• Users may remove entities from displaying on the displayed chart via two methods:
  1) using the second [red] multi-selection list to deselect the checkbox next to the named entity
  2) clicking directly on the coloured node on the chart.
• The chart may be transitioned between two example 'Dimensions' attribute sets using the third [blue] selection list. The axis titles will also update automatically to reflect this change state. Axis titles will update accordingly to reflect this change.
• Red form elements are only required on this prototype, for purposes of demo and testing. These will be replaced by other methods in Navigator. Blue form elements will be migrated over to Navigator 'Live' if the related functionality is deemed necessary, as no direct comparable element currently exists on topic pages. Pink form elements need further user-testing to determine whether they are to be ultimately migrated to our 'Live' environment.
  
• At the present time the selection lists provided do not convey the final Boolean selection logic that we plan to implement once this visualisation is productionized on Nature Navigator.