These 3 examples all synthesize spatial information to produce knowledge that would otherwise not exist. Rubel et al 13 mined published literature to map tick locations in Germany. Atlantic coast to understand the distribution of the species and combined these data with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) 11 and iNaturalist 12 observations. They mapped literature citing locations of 2 beach grasses on the U.S.
Goldstein et al 10 is one of the few examples of mapping study sites directly. Lowry et al 9 wrote a systematic review of biological invasion literature and produced a map of study site locations as part of the analysis showing that publications about biological invasions are concentrated in North America, Europe, and New Zealand. 7, 8 There are a few examples of mapping individual publications that demonstrate the utility of this exercise for gaining a deeper understanding of a collection of publications. In the few examples that exist, the data are usually aggregated at the country or regional level to obtain counts of publication, rather than to display individual publications. 6ĭespite the potential utility of visualizing the locations of scientific studies, academic journal articles are not often the subject of maps. Another map, “Mythical Creatures of Europe” is a print map that shows the locations of mythical creatures as described in historical written documents giving specific publications that map to specific locations. There are several recent examples of mapping the physical locations in which the plot of works of fiction took place-“Shakespeare on the Map,” 2 “Placing Literature,” 3 “The Literary City,” 4 “No Sweat Shakespeare” 5 are all examples of web maps of real-world locations that happen in fictional works. As maps are tools for understanding the spatial relationships between entities, 1 creating a map of the locations associated with the papers in a literature review allows a researcher to see spatial relationships in the published literature. Often a literature review describes the geographic extent of the study site locations in the collected papers, but written descriptions are more commonly included in the review than a map (personal observation). Academics use the traditional literature review, whether published alone or as a part of a larger paper, to describe in text form the literature that has been published about a particular topic and how the papers relate to each other.
#Zotero web plugin code#
The source code for Literature Mapper is available in the corresponding author’s GitHub repository: Īnalyzing the body of published studies in any given field continues to be an important process in academia. The results of this exercise are presented in static and web map form. To evaluate Literature Mapper’s ability to provide insights into the spatial distribution of published literature, we provide a case study using the tool to map the study sites described in academic publications related to the biogeomorphology of California’s coastal strand vegetation, a line of research in which air movement, soil, and water are all driving factors. Using Zotero as the backend data storage, Literature Mapper benefits from all of its features including shared citation Collections, public sharing, and an open web API usable by additional applications, such as web mapping libraries. Literature Mapper receives data from and sends data to the user’s online database via Zotero’s web API. Literature Mapper enhances the citations in a user’s online Zotero database with geo-locations by storing spatial coordinates as part of traditional citation entries.
#Zotero web plugin free#
Literature Mapper uses QGIS’ spatial capabilities to allow users to digitize and add location information to a Zotero library, a free and open-source bibliography manager on basemaps or other geographic data of the user’s choice. Here, we introduce Literature Mapper, a Python QGIS plugin that provides a method for creating a spatial bibliography manager as well as a specification for storing spatial data in a bibliography manager. Knowing where studies have been previously undertaken can be a valuable addition to future research, including understanding the geographical context of previously published literature and selecting future study sites. Many studies in air, soil, and water research involve observations and sampling of a specific location.