Arizona Literature Mapper: An integrated approach to monitor and analyze global bioterrorism research literature

Biomedical research is critical to biodefense, which is drawing increasing attention from governments globally as well as from various research communities. The U.S. government has been closely monitoring and regulating biomedical research activities, particularly those studying or involving bioterrorism agents or diseases. Effective surveillance requires comprehensive understanding of extant biomedical research and timely detection of new developments or emerging trends. The rapid knowledge expansion, technical breakthroughs, and spiraling collaboration networks demand greater support for literature search and sharing, which cannot be effectively supported by conventional literature search mechanisms or systems. In this study, we propose an integrated approach that integrates advanced techniques for content analysis, network analysis, and information visualization. We design and implement Arizona Literature Mapper, a Web-based portal that allows users to gain timely, comprehensive understanding of bioterrorism research, including leading scientists, research groups, institutions as well as insights about current mainstream interests or emerging trends. We conduct two user studies to evaluate Arizona Literature Mapper and include a well-known system for benchmarking purposes. According to our results, Arizona Literature Mapper is significantly more effective for supporting users' search of bioterrorism publications than PubMed. Users consider Arizona Literature Mapper more useful and easier to use than PubMed. Users are also more satisfied with Arizona Literature Mapper and show stronger intentions to use it in the future. Assessments of Arizona Literature Mapper's analysis functions are also positive, as our subjects consider them useful, easy to use, and satisfactory. Our results have important implications that are also discussed in the paper.