Assisting researchers in bibliographic tasks: A new usable, real-time tool for analyzing bibliographies

The amount of scientific papers is growing together with the development of science itself; but, although there is an unprecedented availability of large citation indexes, some daily activities of researchers remain time-consuming and poorly supported. In this paper, we present VisualBib, a real-time visual platform, designed using a zz-structure-based model for linking metadata and a narrative, visual approach for showing bibliographies. VisualBib represents a usable, advanced, and visual tool, which simplifies the management of bibliographies, supports a core set of bibliographic tasks and helps researchers during complex analyses on scientific bibliographies. We present the variety of metadata formats and visualization methods, proposing two use case scenarios. The maturity of the system implementation allowed us two studies, for evaluating both the effectiveness of VisualBib in providing answers to specific data analysis tasks and to support experienced users during real life uses. The results of the evaluation are positive and describe an effective, and usable platform.