Introduction

Why?
The first entry in Börner’s Atlas diary is from January 4, 2007. It reads: “The Atlas is not only for the 300 scientometricians that have historically studied and mapped science, but for anybody who needs better access to science and technology results.” I want to “show readers a world—the world of knowledge—in new ways. I want to introduce them to a Candy Land of new insights, methods, tools, and solutions.”

Later the diary reads: “Still sorting through five years of research. It is interesting to puzzle the many bits and pieces together to see a larger picture emerge. The main contribution of the Atlas might not be the many maps, but the conceptualization of how science evolves dynamically and how it can be measured, mapped, and understood.”

When?
Data collection for the Atlas began in 2005 with the debut of the first exhibit maps. Much of the writing for the Atlas of Science was done during Börner’s sabbatical in Spring 2007. It continued until Summer 2009. Final files were submitted to MIT in April 2010.

Where?
Writing happened mostly at Börner’s home in the middle of an Indiana forest. As the project progressed, printouts of pages, possible imagery, and page layouts started to fill most of the walls. Two new large file cabinets were acquired to organize all the material needed for the Atlas.

Text, raw data, and images, together with hand-drawn sketches of the layout were used by Elisha Hardy Allgood to design mock-ups of each double-page spread. These mock-ups were essential for finalizing the amount of text, the concrete image(s), and the final layout for each page. Text and imagery had to go hand-in-hand to create synergies not achievable by any alone, yet each major theme had to fit on a double-page spread. Later, the design mock-ups were used as the basis for the final print design.

How?
Many different datasets were considered for rendering the figures and maps in the Atlas. Ultimately, we used only the highest-quality datasets for which permissions could be acquired. Interested to connect current data and prior work, we extended earlier charts of scientific productivity using current data. Due to copyright regulations, these charts could not be included in the Atlas.
The decision of how to list the more than 1800 references was a difficult one. Some of the pages have more than 80 references and placing 80 four-digit numbers in the text would have cluttered up the pages. The listing of references and credits by double-page spread, accompanied by a searchable listing of all references, was a compromise between usability and affordability.

Atlas Trivia

The Atlas features more than 30 full-page science maps, 50 data charts, a timeline of science-mapping milestones, and 500 color images. It was written on four different laptops and two desktop computers. The raw files use over 10GB of disk space.