The Extraordinary Work of Scientists During the Pandemic

The outbreak of the coronavirus in 2019 did not only impact society worldwide but also the research environment, as peopled by scientists and scholars. More than 600,000 scientific articles on the virus have been published to date, with most of them having been written since January 2020.

In order to grasp the magnitude of this literature and reveal the invisible (net-)work of scientists behind it, we made use of artificial intelligence to create a three-dimensional data visualization that displays all of these articles as luminescent spheres. These spheres are organized in space by similarity: the more they have in common, the greater their proximity. By rotating the data visualization, a time axis will appear to show the explosion of scientific literature that came with the pandemic.

Credits

Dario Rodighiero (IT), Elian Carsenat (FR), Eveline Wandl-Vogt (AT), Garamantis (DE), Ars Electronica Solutions (AT)

Ars Electronica Research Institute knowledge for humanity / k4h+ (AT)
Ars Electronica Solutions (AT)
Garamantis (DE) – https://www.garamantis.com
exploration space / Austrian Academy of Sciences (AT)
Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) (EU)
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) (CH)
metalab (at) Harvard (US)
Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society (US)
Harvard University (US)
NamSor (FR)

The project has been possible through the generous funding of DARIAH Theme Call in Arts, Humanities, and COVID-19.