Monday, May 05, 2008

Research paper word clouds

Brian at Clastic Detritus has word clouded two of his papers, creating what has to be the coolest word cloud use ever. Having no shame, I am going to copy him.

Here is Birch et al. 1997:
created at TagCrowd.com


Here is Klemme et al. 1998:
created at TagCrowd.com


Note that both papers pass the suck-up test- the PhD advisor's name (from references) is not a prominent word. This is unsurprising, given that the people who actually wrote these papers haven't been students for some time.

The appearance of Sutherland raises a self-referential alert in Birch et al., but other than that the lists seem pretty topical.

Now I need to get some of my own manuscripts submitted so that I can do this on them!

2 comments:

  1. People usually consider reseach papers boring, but using these clouds doesn't only make them creative, but easier to navigate with too.

    Thanks for the idea man.

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  2. Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.

    ReplyDelete