INFOVIS: A COLLABORATIVE SYSTEM FOR VISUALIZING REPOSITORIES

This article aims to conceptualize a new communicative paradigm applied to academic scientific repositories. The publication and the querying of articles, papers, journals, books and other documents, are an integral part of the research process. However, the querying and information visualization process in a scientific academic repository, often proves to be inefficient, and a hard task, because the wide range of results hardly fits in the user’s specific subject. In this sense, this paper highlights a problem that emerges from the user’s relationship with an academic repository of scientific information. In particular, a problem that is related to the “object content” (results) that best suits the interests/user’s specific subject. However, if we equate that this information is accessed by a significant number of users with a specific interest in a topic, and in the course of their research they handle a significant amount of information, it is then possible to consider the existence of a hierarchical and relational structure of evidences, that emerges from the relationship established between the various users and their specific interests and the querying performed. Therefore, it is fundamental to consider the user’s experience and the leading role that it could represent in filtering information. The Information Visualization (InfoVis) techniques directed to knowledge networks also constitutes a fundamental approach. In this sense, this paper presents a brief analysis around major reference projects, which although based in the metric of article citations (impact factor), the primary goal lies in the visualization of an extensive citation structure and the relations established between the different scientific fields. However, based on the modus operandi of these visualization interfaces, the main objective of this paper is to propose a new approach, where the filtering and the visualization of information is based in the user’s experience instead of the usual citation “object” centered approach.