The Progressive MS Authors Galaxy

Developed by Khawai.

This data visualization presents a network map of the connections among 1253 authors of 263 research papers that reported results of clinical trials in progressive forms of multiple sclerosis between January 1983 and September 2015.

Each circle represents an author. Its size is a function of the number of published articles and the author's rank compared to that of others. For each paper, we've given the first author a weight of 5, while co-authors have a weight of 1. (This reflects the author order convention in clinical study reports, in which is the first author typically is the principal investigator.) The area of the circle represents the sum of the weights. Each link represents a collaboration between two authors.

Force-Directed graphs, such as this, offer a helpful perspective by clustering the circles and thus revealing trends. However the large amount of data displayed can make it hard to analyze.

We added interactive features to improve the readability :

• Mouse over the circle to highlight the links with co-authors and display each author's name. The names of the 10 most prolific authors are permanently displayed.
• Click and drag the circle to animate the graph. When clicked, the circle becomes orange and "sticky," which allows you to reshape the layout. Double-click to cancel.
• Find a specific author using the drop-down menu. The corresponding circle will be highlighted in yellow.

The data come from a PubMed search for “progressive multiple sclerosis,” limited to article types of “clinical trial,” text availability of “abstract,” and species of “humans.” This search generated 662 results. The abstracts were curated individually to select only the relevant papers relating to people diagnosed with primary progressive MS (PPMS), secondary progressive MS (SPMS), or chronic progressive multiple sclerosis (old terminology describing any form of progressive MS).

For all of you who want to dive deeper into the data, there is a link at the bottom of the graphic to a spreadsheet listing the studies.