The Cocitation Network Graph from the Signs@40 DH project visually represents the connections between sources in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Sources
Johnathan Goodwin provided the data that included the citations from the first issue of Signs to the Winter 2013 issue. These citations include metadata such as the author’s name, the source’s title, the date, any editors’ names, and the publisher.
Processes
The data is processed by shifting through the citations and checking that the source is cited more than four times and cocited with another source at least four times. Johnathan Goodwin did much of the programming for the graph, Neal Caren created the Python script to generate the citation network data file, and Mike Bostock made the d3.js library that the network graph relies on.
Presentation
The processed information is then presented in an interactive graph. A circle is created on the graph if it meets the requirements in the processing stage. A line is drawn between the sources that have been cocited. The larger the circle, the more citations the source has. Users can click on an individual circle to see a source’s specific citation and its connections with other sources.
Questions
It was interesting to see the connections that some sources had and compare that number to the source’s total number of citations in Signs. For example, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’ article “Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work” has only one connection but 10 total citations. Meanwhile, the article that is cited alongside that article, Nicole Constable’s “Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers” is connected to two sources but only has 5 total citations. This begs the question: Are there any sources that are cited numerous times but are not frequently cocited with other works? Would these types of sources be considered a part of the “conversation” amongst authors seen in Signs, and would there be a way to represent these types of sources in a different graph?
Academic Field / Intended Audience
This project is in conversation with the field of Feminist Studies since people in this field can study the interactions between different conversations regarding gender, like how intersectionality between gender and race can be connected to lesbianism through a chain of sources on the graph. The target audience is likely specialists who are familiar with Signs and different academic works based on gender.
