Trends and Impact in Visualization Research

The Vis conference has generally maintained the highest Number of Publications, showing particularly strong and steady growth since 2006. Other key conferences emerged over time, with InfoVis appearing around 1995, followed by VAST and SciVis around 2006. While SciVis exhibits highly volatile publication counts, both InfoVis and VAST show a general upward trend along their Publication Date, with their totals converging in recent years.

The typical citation impact varies substantially by Paper Type, with Conference publications achieving the highest Median Aminer Citations. Journal articles follow closely in citation performance, while both are cited at a much higher rate than publications classified as Miscellaneous, which have a significantly lower median citation count. This suggests that in the visualization research field, conference and journal publications are the primary venues for work that receives wider academic attention.

The Conference InfoVis stands out with a substantially higher Median Citations count, indicating a greater typical impact for its publications compared to the other venues. Following a significant drop-off in this metric, VAST and SciVis form a distinct secondary tier of impact, both ranking well above Vis.

A positive relationship generally exists between Citations and Downloads, indicating that publications with higher citation counts tend to be downloaded more frequently across every Paper Type. This correlation is most pronounced for Journal articles, which form the densest data cluster, whereas Conference and Miscellaneous papers show a more diffuse pattern. Notably, publications with few or no citations exhibit a wide variance in downloads, suggesting that initial reader engagement is not solely dependent on established citation impact.

The annual Frequency of top research Keywords reveals a significant shift in focus across each Publication Year, highlighted by the emergence and rapid rise of visual analytics as a dominant theme after 2005. This trend contrasts with the life cycles of earlier popular topics like volume rendering and flow visualization, which both peaked in the early 2000s and have since seen a general decline. Meanwhile, information visualization shows a more prolonged period of popularity through the 2000s, and the foundational term visualization maintains a relatively steady, fluctuating presence over the entire period.

There is no apparent correlation between paper Length and the number of Citations it receives, as most publications fall within a narrow range of lengths regardless of their citation count. Instead, Award Status appears to be a much stronger indicator of scholarly impact. Publications designated as Award-Winning tend to garner significantly more citations, whereas a large volume of papers with No Award are concentrated at the lowest citation levels.

The Avg Pubs Cited per paper shows a predominantly upward trend over the Year for all conferences, indicating a community-wide shift toward more extensive referencing. The VAST and SciVis conferences emerge later in the timeline and show rapid growth, quickly aligning with the rising citation counts of InfoVis and Vis. While all venues follow this general increase, some show notable volatility, such as a temporary dip for both SciVis and InfoVis around 2015, before their citation rates began to converge in more recent years.