2.8 The largest networks visualized by CiteSpace

The maximum size of a network that can be visualized by CiteSpace mostly depends on the hardware of your computer, especially the amount of memory available to Java Virtual Machine. The number of nodes and the number of edges in a network can also be a factor.

Here I will collect some examples of the largest networks visualized by CiteSpace to illustrate what you may get. On the other hand, you may ask whether it is a good idea to go for the largest possible network. Many nodes often end up being little more than some pixels in the background.

The example below is a visualized network of 30,640 nodes and 133,975 edges. More precisely, this represents the universe of 30,640 references cited by the top 10% most cited Drexel University's publications each year between 2000 and 2014. References=30,640, Instances of Co-Citation=133,975, Modularity Q=0.9756, Mean Silhouette=0.5702. The red labels are cluster labels. The red dots or circles are papers with citation bursts, i.e. they are hotspots in terms of how fast they gathered citations.