What a publication timeline can tell you

Now that I can automatically import my publications from my ORCID profile and display them in this blog, I also want to visualize them. I have started with d3.js code that displays the number of publications per year - using the list of my publications in Citeproc JSON format. The chart is displayed on my About page, but I have also embedded the Javascript here:

I am a big fan of data visualizations because they can highlight something that you would otherwise miss. In this case, I was really surprised to see how well my different academic jobs over the years (1991-1993, 1994-1998, 1998-2000, 2000-2005, 2005-2012) are reflected in my publication pattern. You clearly see the gaps between the jobs, indicating that I not only switched jobs but also changed the research focus every time. The publications are listed chronologically on the About page page and you can look at the papers I wrote since my first publication in 1993. My publication pattern seems to indicate that I was never really on track for a typical academic career, so it should not be a surprise that I left academia in 2012.

There are at least two other visualizations I want to do: publications by type (journal article, book chapter, dataset, etc.), and author position with the number of co-authors. You can reuse the Javascript code with small modifications (CSS and the JSON query) even if you are not running a Jekyll blog.

References

Fenner, M. (2013). Automatically list all your publications in your blog. https://doi.org/10.53731/axtz227-73n18e7