6.1 Time Slicing

Given a dataset of bibliographic records, you need to choose the timespan that you want CiteSpace to analyze so that any records outside the timespan will be ignored. For example, your dataset may contain records from 1800s till 2014, you may choose to focus on the most recent 10 years or on a period in between. You can also include the entire dataset if you want to.

You can time slice the timespan in many ways by setting the value of #Years Per Slice. Typically, you would use 1-year slices and the number of networks will be the same as the number of years within the timespan. Alternatively, you could use k-year slices so that each slide represents data of k years. You can also make a single slice so that you will only deal with one network.

The default selection is to divide the timespan into multiple 1-year slices.