Graphical interface of the SCImago Journal and Country rank: an interactive approach to accessing bibliometric information

A graphical interface designed to access the bibliometric indicators database of the SCImago Journal & Country Rank portal (http://scimagojr.com/shapeofscience) is described. The map was generated from the relational matrix based on the citation, co-citation, and bibliographic coupling formed by the nearly 20,000 publications (journals and conference proceedings) registered in Scopus. The map layout is based on a variant of a force-directed algorithm using Noack’s proposal of an
edge-repulsion energy model. The interface allows the publications’ bibliometric indicators and the cluster structures that they form to be displayed based on their shared use by the authors of the documents. To facilitate navigation, the interface automatically positions the reference areas and subject categories which are viewable via zoom-and-pan. The interface may be found to constitute a useful tool for analyses of the Scopus publications’ presence in different scientific domains, and of
the global distribution of the publishing capacity of different countries and regions. It uses the method of overlaying maps to locate subsets of selected publications in the context of the global publication structure.