Oct
14
2003
Introducing RefViz… a new data anaylysis tool that lets users explore research literature visually
Adept Scientific are pleased to announce the release of a brand-new text analysis and visualisation software package for the researcher’s desktop called RefViz. Powered by OmniViz and developed by ISI ResearchSoft, the makers of EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite and WriteNote, RefViz is designed to facilitate the comprehension of literature and provides users with a powerful way to explore reference literature visually to identify major themes and topics.
“Using text analysis and visualisation together with bibliographic software helps researchers evaluate vast amounts of references used for managing projects and publishing,” said David Kochalko, President of ISI ResearchSoft. “RefViz is an excellent example of the complementary tools we are developing and licensing to improve the research and publishing experience of our customers.”
Explore reference literature visually
Today’s academics, students and researchers are faced with an overwhelming amount of information to organise, track and understand with too little time to digest it. RefViz provides an intuitive framework for exploring reference collections based on content. It analyses large numbers of references and presents a visual overview of the main topics discussed in the reference set. RefViz processes each dataset with an unbiased review of all relevant terms found in the title and abstract/notes fields. It essentially groups the literature the same way you would stack papers. With an at-a-glance overview, users can orient themselves with the literature to reveal trends and associations in references.
“RefViz is a wonderful program that allows one to easily separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’.” David J. Smith, Ph.D.
Whether users want to search personal EndNote, Reference Manager or ProCite databases; or capture suitable references from online sources such as ISI Web of Science, OCLC, or PubMed, RefViz provides a suite of tools and an additional level of analysis that can help to home in on relevant information in the shortest time possible. At the same time RefViz broadens understanding of a particular field by visually demonstrating how certain topic areas are interrelated. It can even pick up on references that standard searches might normally miss.
“RefViz actually pointed out references I had missed despite extensive research.”
John Ward, student
View references in Galaxy and Matrix landscapes
The Galaxy view organises references according to how they are related conceptually and provides an overview of how each reference is related to every other reference. The Matrix view highlights related terms by presenting a review of which subjects tend to be discussed together in the literature (terms vs. terms), or an overview of the major concepts discussed across groups (terms vs. groups). This helps users understand the overlap and associations between concepts. With additional RefViz tools, users can apply their expertise to fine tune their analyses.
Publish results faster
Used together with EndNote, Reference Manager and ProCite, RefViz probes deeper into existing reference collections and lets users find the most relevant citations for their papers. Researchers, writers and students depend on EndNote, ProCite and Reference Manager to locate bibliographic data and create bibliographies for curricula vitae, manuscripts, grant proposals, term papers and other publications. Using these products, writers save countless hours of typing and interpreting style requirements of scholarly publications by simply selecting the publication by name and generating a perfectly formatted document. The combination of text analysis and bibliographic management makes these products ideal for any discipline whether in the sciences or the arts and humanities.
RefViz is currently available for Windows NT/ME/2000/XP only, but a version for Macintosh OS X is planned. For further product information, go to
http://www.refviz .co.uk.
With offices in the UK, USA, Germany and throughout the Nordic region, Adept Scientific is one of the world’s leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers.