Web functional maps of the EU research area - development of user-friendly visualisation tools

Objectives

• Building of geographic maps and pseudo-maps to show the size and relationships of the EU R&D web.
• Building of so-called functional web maps driven by the relative contribution of each cluster of web sites and their visibility from several groups of domains.
• Analysing to what extent knowledge production is a local enterprise and how this pattern evolves over time.

Description of work/methodology

This project is based on data collected in 2/1, 2/2, and 3/1, secondary data sources (such as the EISTES project) and additional data gathering. It is based on project 3/2 and will be developed in parallel with a delayed starting point. While in project WP 3/1 the focus will be on data collection and indicator development, this project will focus on mapping and mapping techniques.

The EU web sites representing an university or a research centre at its NUTS level 3 geographical codes will be allocated so that regional maps can be built on data derived from number, size and density of such sites. Each web site will be evaluated to measure its visibility considering the number and distribution of the unique links received (evaluated from search engines, and the linkage structure according to WP 3/1).The data will be used to create clusters and to plot these clusters in maps.

For visualisation, 3D mapping techniques, animated figures, as well as interactive maps (web-based) will be tested. A full set of maps and pseudo-maps should be ready for web distribution at the end of the project.