Getting Started

To get started with VOSviewer, you may want to take a look at some of the sources of information listed below.

Video

Share this page

VOSviewer manual

The VOSviewer manual provides detailed and up-to-date information on the functionality of VOSviewer. The manual can also be accessed using the Manual button in VOSviewer.

Open VOSviewer manual

 

VOSviewer book chapter

VOSviewer is discussed in detail in a recent book chapter. The chapter provides a tutorial in which the use of VOSviewer is demonstrated in a step-by-step manner. The chapter is based on VOSviewer version 1.5.5. Some of the improvements and extensions introduced in the most recent versions of VOSviewer are therefore not covered in the chapter. In addition to VOSviewer, the chapter also discusses the CitNetExplorer tool for visualizing and analyzing citation networks of publications.

Open VOSviewer book chapter

VOSviewer paper

VOSviewer was originally introduced in a paper published in Scientometrics in 2010. In the meantime, VOSviewer has been improved and extended in many ways, so the paper is not fully up-to-date anymore. However, it still provides a useful introduction into the main ideas underlying VOSviewer.

Open VOSviewer paper

AIDA bookletAIDA booklet

The AIDA booklet introduces diverse case studies on research positioning and trend identification. These case studies are relevant for PhD candidates, researchers, group leaders, and policy makers. Many of the case studies make use of VOSviewer.

Open AIDA booklet

Comments

Mandatory fields
  • giuseppe May 8th, 2023 9:39 am
    Dear Ludo, in bibliographic coupling (of documents, mainly) is there a way to determine the optimal number of clusters in which to classify objects? I have seen empirically that once the min cluster size has been established, by increasing resolution the number of clusters quickly stabilizes. Does this seem like a correct mode to you? I generally place the min cluster size between 30 and 40 documents (in collections between 1000-3000 documents) in order to have enough documents for any subsequent applications, for example keyword co-occurrence. I hope you are well and preparing another one of your precious packages.
    Reply
  • Safiyeh Tayebi May 2nd, 2023 9:56 am
    How to cite VOSviewer in our papers?
    Reply
  • Dirk Spennemann April 19th, 2023 7:58 am
    I am trying to use VOS viewer generate a map from lines of comma-separated keywords that exists as a standalone CSV file. Is there a way to import this file?
    Reply
  • Caio March 23rd, 2023 8:32 pm
    I'm starting to use vosviewer for my research, this tutorial helped me a lot about how to use correctly this tool. Thanks very much
    Reply
  • ~Salman March 21st, 2023 12:07 pm
    I am scholar and researcher.
    Reply
  • Misha February 25th, 2023 5:31 pm
    I m getting an error in vos viewer line 8 has incorrect no of columns what to do?
    Reply
  • Carlos February 24th, 2023 2:47 pm
    Hello, working with VOSviewer version 1.6.19 and trying to query Crossref (DOI, ISSN...) I get an error message: Error downloading cross reference data. Connection problem. I have checked my internet connection and it is fine. Any suggestion?
    Reply
  • Bethanie Carney Almroth, PhD February 22nd, 2023 3:01 pm
    Hi,
    I am new to VOS and I have a few questions!
    Is it possible to to e.g remove items (terms) after a map has been generated?
    How does one merge terms to one (e.g. a term and its abbreviation)?
    /Bethanie
    Reply
  • Alessandra Pinto fagundes February 21st, 2023 3:16 pm
    Dear Prof van Eck and Prof Waltman,
    I'm consulting the bibliography on data normalization methods in vosviewer, according to the literature indicated in the manual ( VOSviewer version 1.6.19, p. 22). However, I was unable to satisfactorily interpret the differences between equations 6 (association) and 13 (fractionation). Mainly the option in the analysis table "fractionalization" to visualize items and/or clusters. Thank you very much.
    Reply
  • Ekrem February 14th, 2023 9:04 pm
    Hello, how could ı merge scopus and WoS data and run on vosviewer.
    Reply
  • mardhiya January 21st, 2023 5:27 am
    Hi. I would like to ask, when I generate the co-authorship visualisation map between countries, there are few dots that do not have any country name. May I know why is that? I set the minimum document of a country is 3.
    Thank you very much
    Reply
  • Philip December 16th, 2022 5:51 am
    Is the following description of total link strength in keyword co-occurrence analysis correct?
    "Total link strength is a metric that captures the number of other keywords with which the specified keyword co-occurred (i.e., was linked) in the review database.
    Thanks.
    Philip
    Reply
  • Milya Sirazi November 24th, 2022 12:35 pm
    I tried to upload the 1st 2000 results and have not open or change the file, but VOSviewer shows an error "IOException line 1199 invalid char between encapsulated token and delimiter". Does somebody know what does it mean?
    Reply
  • José Antonio dos Santos November 15th, 2022 10:30 pm
    Agradeço pelo VOSviewer.
    Reply
  • Peter Mylius-Clark November 14th, 2022 4:56 am
    Thanks for VOSviewer. Can you please explain how total link strength is calculated so I can interpret what it means. I’d like to use it in a term cooccurrence analysis. For example I have a term with 24 binary occurrences and a TLS of 71. Thanks Peter
    Reply
  • Peter Mylius-Clark November 14th, 2022 4:40 am
    Thankyou for VOSviewer. Can you please explain how total link strength is calculated. I’d like to use it for a term concurrence analysis but am unclear beyond the general description in the manual how to interpret the numbers. For example if have a word with 24 binary cooccurrences and a total link strength of 71?
    Reply
  • AISHA KAKKAR November 8th, 2022 4:56 pm
    I am using VOSviewer 1.6.18 version and till few days back everything was working fine but then suddenly, I am not able to save any of the maps generated to my system. As soon as I save or copy to clipboard, the application stops responding and keeps hanging until I have to force quit it. So basically, whatever results I am generating through VOSviewer, I am not able to save or export them. I have tried re-installing app multiple times, having cleared cached files and restarting the system.
    I am using MacBook Air, iOS (Big Sur, 11.2). Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
    Reply
  • Philip October 23rd, 2022 3:04 am
    Hi Ludo
    Two questions.
    1. Is there any viable method of disambiguating Chinese author names such as "wang, y." when it refers to multiple authors and there is no alternate form (e.g., wang, y. and wang y.y.)?
    2. On co-citation and keyword maps, what accounts for the situation when two authors/keywords with many links but are located far apart on a map?
    Thanks.
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman October 23rd, 2022 10:22 pm
      1. VOSviewer offers an option to work with first names instead of initials (available only if your data set includes first names). This option may reduce the challenge of author name disambiguation. However, Chinese names remain difficult. I am afraid VOSviewer doesn't provide a solution for this.
      2. Hard to say without a concrete example, but presumably the two items also have links with lots of other items and these other items represent two different communities or topics and are therefore located in different areas in the map.
      Reply
  • Karim October 14th, 2022 6:05 pm
    Hi
    I m using Vosviewer 1.6.18, it's an amazing tool, however with this new version we don't have the ability to use the keyword analysis does not exist, there are only 4 type of analysis: Co-Authorship, Citation, Bibliographic coupling and co-citation we no longer have the possibility to choose Co-Occurrence.
    Any Idea on how to overcome this issue
    Thanks
    Reply
  • geliang yao October 12th, 2022 12:52 pm
    How does VOSviewer calculate the average publication year?
    Reply
  • Julian October 12th, 2022 11:00 am
    Dear Prof van Eck and Prof Waltman,
    In a term co-occurrence map, is it possible to see which specific journal articles a term shown in the map is linked to?
    Thank you so much,
    Julian
    Reply
    • Karim October 14th, 2022 6:07 pm
      Hi Julian
      I m using Vosviewer 1.6.18, it's an amazing tool, however with this new version we don't have the ability to use the keyword analysis does not exist, there are only 4 type of analysis: Co-Authorship, Citation, Bibliographic coupling and co-citation we no longer have the possibility to choose Co-Occurrence.
      Any Idea on how to overcome this issue
      Thanks
      Reply
    • Leonardo February 6th, 2023 3:27 pm
      Hi,
      Thank you for this amazing tool. Does someone know the answer to Julian's question?
      Many thanks,
      Leonardo
      Reply
  • Mohammad Teymouri October 6th, 2022 5:58 pm
    Hi,
    There is an error when I want to use the thesaurus file!
    It says, "error while reading VOSreviewer thesaurus file (line1), incorrect use of quotes.
    Thanks, Mohammad
    Reply
  • Fai August 17th, 2022 9:56 pm
    I solved it, select all options not the default when you do csv export from Scopus
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azw1EEZrNI8
    Reply
  • Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha August 12th, 2022 12:32 pm
    Hi. I have a text of keywords/topics that I would like to analyse and map using the VosViewer. The topics are in the format below. When I try to analyse them, VosViewer maps words instead of a topic/phrase. I have tried to separate the words using a semi-colon but in vain. The file format is .txt.
    HIV,HIV Infections,HIV-1
    Health Literacy,Patients,Internet
    Traffic Control,Transportation,Models
    Industry,Research,Marketing
    Archives,Library,Collections
    Semantics,Models,Recommender Systems
    Agents,Game Theory,Models
    Electricity,Energy,Economics
    Electronic Health Records,Medical Informatics,Delivery Of Health Care
    Library,Librarian,Information
    Library,Librarian,Information
    Archives,Library,Collections
    Library,Librarian,Information
    Industry,Information Systems,Research
    Microfinance,Farmers,Cooperative
    Library,Librarian,Information
    Computer Crime,Network Security,Intrusion Detection
    Knowledge Management,Industry,Research
    Microfinance,Farmers,Cooperative
    Neutropenia,Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor,Neutrophils
    Reply
    • JWKorte April 18th, 2023 2:30 pm
      I have similar problems with VosViewer: Even without whitespaces some ngrams are preprocessed as different words (conflictsociology -> conflict, sociology). Is there any idea to work around the preprocessing?
      Aside this: Thank you very much for providing VosViewer
      Reply
  • taeku wang August 8th, 2022 8:45 am
    Hello, what is the difference between the keywords analysis in "bibliographic data" and the terms of Title and abstract fields in ”text data“?
    In what situation will you record each of the methods?
    thank you!
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman August 8th, 2022 4:05 pm
      Keywords are the keywords assigned to a document by the authors and/or the database. Terms are terms extracted from the titles and abstracts of documents. Some VOSviewer users feel that keyword co-occurrence maps are more useful and informative, while others prefer term co-occurrence maps. It is therefore hard to make a general recommendation to use either keyword co-occurrence maps or term co-occurrence maps. Personally I use term co-occurrence maps much more often than keyword co-occurrence maps.
      Reply
      • taeku wang August 16th, 2022 4:11 am
        thank you for your reply.
        can you tell me why you prefer term co-occurrence maps?
        by the way, I have one more question.
        When I conducted keyword and terms co-occurrence analysis, the results were very different. some text appears largest in keyword co-occurrence, but the text did not show at all in terms co-occurrence. Do you know why that happens?
        Reply
  • Amutl July 29th, 2022 9:02 am
    Hello Prof Waltman,
    I would be extremely grateful if you could help me with the following issue:
    I exported data from Scopus by checking all the boxes for a CSV file. When I open the file in VOSviewer, however, it only displays the Co-authorship and Co-occurrence options. There is no citation, bibliographic coupling, or co-citation.
    Your response is highly valued.
    Reply
    • Fairouz August 17th, 2022 9:54 pm
      I solved it, select all options not the default when you do csv export from Scopus
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azw1EEZrNI8
      Reply
  • Josie Slaathaug July 21st, 2022 11:39 pm
    Hello,
    I created a thesaurus file to replace common names with species names, and I'm having trouble getting vosviewer to read it properly. Keywords of common names are still appearing when it should be only cleaned up species names. Does anyone have advice on how to get this file to work? I simply made a two-column excel sheet and exported as a tab-delimited .txt file.
    Quick help would be much appreciated!
    Reply
  • Edi July 21st, 2022 1:19 pm
    Hello Prof Waltman,
    I would be extremely grateful if you could help me with the following issue:
    I exported data from Scopus by checking all the boxes for a CSV file. When I open the file in VOSviewer, however, it only displays the Co-authorship and Co-occurrence options. There is no citation, bibliographic coupling, or co-citation.
    Your response is highly valued.
    Reply
  • TSH July 18th, 2022 6:20 pm
    The txt or ris file extracted from WoS is not working for this version of VOSviewer(can't analysis co-occurrence or so), please fix this problem :(
    Reply
  • sani July 1st, 2022 5:03 pm
    How do we fix the import errors from EndNote X9 file to VOSviewer?
    can not find author %A or keyword %K field
    Reply
  • Rohini Gupta June 30th, 2022 4:25 pm
    Hello, I made a variety of maps yesterday and hosted them on a website through Google Drive links. The embedded maps are now all broken. When I make a new map and try to share the link through google drive, the maps do not work and I get an error that the JSON files cannot be found (even though I went through authentication). Everything was working perfectly and then stopped.
    Reply
  • Ali Hadi June 24th, 2022 4:57 pm
    Please help!
    I exported data from Scopus and ticked all the boxes to have a CSV file. However, when I import the file in VOSviewer, it only shows Co-authorship and Co-occurnance options. Citation, bibliographic coupling and co-cotation are not active.
    Reply
  • zeyu wang June 15th, 2022 5:03 am
    hi
    can we use co-citation analysis?
    currently, it is unavailable as we cannot select or click.
    it is in gray color.
    Thanks!
    Reply
  • Hasan Al-Rizzo June 11th, 2022 8:21 pm
    Is it possible to use Arabic language in this software?.
    Thaks
    Reply
  • Lubov Panchenko June 6th, 2022 1:26 pm
    I teach my student to use VOSviewer in Ukraine. Thanks!
    Reply
  • Sanober Naheed June 3rd, 2022 6:30 am
    Hi,
    I am having problem with key word mapping. Everytime it is showing error. And now even the other functions other than co authors is nor working.
    Reply
  • Patricia May 31st, 2022 10:29 pm
    Dear Ludo,
    Could you please explain a bit more about the algorithm for calculating the relevance scores? I read from previous answers that there is no documentation, but I'd like to understand better the criteria to assign this score. Essentially, if I choose to keep the 60% (or similar) of terms, it always disregards terms that are very relevant to me, such as some terms from my query.
    Conversely, if I use 100% of the terms, I need to use a long list of terms in the thesaurus file or manually unselect them, otherwise, the map is full of meaningless terms.
    I appreciate any feedback!
    Kind regards,
    Reply
  • Sristhi Singh May 27th, 2022 10:07 pm
    Hello Prof Waltman,
    I would be really grateful if you could help me with the following queries
    1) What does size of the circle on the network visualization map represents?
    2)Does the meaning of size of the circles shown on the network visualization map differs in the case of bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis?
    2) what exactly does total link strength means in case of analysis of articles?
    4) In some cases, some items of one cluster are seen in another cluster, could u please tell what does it represent?
    Reply
  • Abraham May 26th, 2022 6:00 pm
    Hi there,
    Excellent job. Thank you.
    I have a question concerning the word "leafe" appearing in my charts. "Leaves" is a common word in my input file that doesn't appears in the chart. leafe is spacially close to leaf.
    Could you help
    Best regards
    Abraham
    Reply
  • Sona Fathi May 25th, 2022 8:20 pm
    Hello!
    Why you remove the questions were asked before 2022? I refer to them to find my problems. this causes Repetitive question.
    if it is possible email me the previous them. And I have the Repetitive question:
    how can I have screenshots of each cluster separately?
    Reply
  • Monica May 20th, 2022 10:48 am
    Hello!
    I have a question regarding the overlay visualization using the average publication year. I have publications dating from 1999 to 2022, but when I do the overlay visualization it automatically chooses a scale from 2016.5 to 2018. Ofc this is related to the fact that the number of publications in my database, increases for the latest years. I know you have an option of normalizing the years to -1 to 1, but this does not provide enough insights regarding the evolution of research over years. Have you considered adding another normalization/scale to this visualization?
    Thanks!
    Reply
  • Sudarsan May 13th, 2022 8:23 pm
    Good to get familiar with Vos viewer
    Reply
  • Catherine May 13th, 2022 1:08 pm
    Hello, again.
    I've been using thesaurus files containing labels that are not replaced by anything (so the labels are excluded) and labels that are replaced with other terms (for example, key enabling technology would be replaced by technology). I noticed that this results in substantially different identified noun phrases than if I were to not use a thesaurus file. In this case, is it recommended to use a thesaurus file with the way that I've been using it (is this making VOSviewer more effective in identifying relevant noun phrases?), or is it best to use it sparingly and only to replace words with another term?
    Thank you.
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman May 14th, 2022 2:44 pm
      I tend to minimize the use of a thesaurus file. Creating such a file may take a substantial amount of time and often does not significantly affect my interpretation of a term map. While the use of a thesaurus file may significantly affect the details of a term map, in my experience the high-level picture usually doesn't change much, and my advice typically is to focus the interpretation of a term map on the high-level picture, not on the details.
      Reply
  • Catherine May 13th, 2022 12:06 pm
    Hello,
    In the Van Eck and Waltman (2011) paper, what does "distributon of (second-order) co-occurrences mean? Also, what would be the cut-off score between high and low relevance scores? For example, if I have relevance scores between 0.01 and 2.16, would high relevance scores be those above 1.00?
    Thank you.
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman May 14th, 2022 2:25 pm
      I'm afraid we don't have proper documentation of the algorithm for calculating relevance scores, so it's hard to explain the details on the algorithm. There's no specific threshold for determining what should be considered a high relevance score. This is up to the user to decide, and it may depend on the purpose of your analysis and the data set you're working with.
      Reply
  • Sristhi May 11th, 2022 4:03 pm
    Hi,
    i have two queries:
    1) Why vos viewer doesn't show all the labels on the map? Is there a way to deal with this?
    2) How does vos viewer identifies countries of the publications? Is it the country where the authors belong? or is it the country where the article is published?
    3) Does vos viewer allows us to remove the logo of vos viewer from the visualization map?
    I would be grateful if someone could help with this.
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman May 14th, 2022 2:34 pm
      1) This is because there often is not enough space to show all labels. VOSviewer then gives priority to the labels of items with higher weights over the labels of items with lower weights. You could try switching from 'Circles' to 'Frames' if you want to see more labels.
      2) It is the country mentioned in the affiliation of an author as reported in an article.
      3) There is no option in VOSviewer to remove the logo, but you can try to manually remove it by editing a screenshot of a VOSviewer visualization in an image editor.
      Reply
      • Sristhi May 17th, 2022 6:28 pm
        Thank you so much Mr Waltman
        Reply
      • Andrea Denton July 11th, 2022 3:49 pm
        I have the same request. VOS Viewer has proven so valuable for working with our publication data, but making more labels viewable would really help show a more accurate picture of the collaborating institutions. Thank you!!
        Reply
  • nurit Rozolyo May 11th, 2022 11:05 am
    why don't you answer me????????????????
    Reply
  • nurit Rozolyo May 8th, 2022 10:36 am
    there are difficulties in sharing some of the maps, and I can't understand why it share one and not the other....
    for exam:
    https://tinyurl.com/y3faey3g- the link can be shared.
    https://tinyurl.com/yxq6xl63- the link can't be shared!
    I'll appreciate any clarification...
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman May 14th, 2022 8:26 pm
      Apologies for the slow response. It took some time to investigate your problem. There turns out to be a bug in VOSviewer Online. The bug has to do with the use of double quotation marks in JSON files.
      Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention! It will be fixed in the next update of the software.
      Reply
  • Catherine May 7th, 2022 11:43 am
    Hello. I am following up on my questions: 1) While "and" is not included in the noun phrases, "&" is included. I'm wondering why that may be? 2) I was trying to send a previous message several times as it kept saying the verification expired until I got a message saying that my IP was banned due to suspicious activity. I couldn't access the website after that. I am now on a different IP and when I went to this webpage, I saw that my message had already gone through. Is there a way to clear the ban? 3) Just a note that it doesn't seem like all plural noun phrases are converted to singular. For example, "key enabling technologies" and "key enabling technology" are both in the "Verify selected terms" section of "Create map". 4) The “Share” icon doesn’t show up for me on VOSviewer Online. I’ve tried it on Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. Is there a reason I'm not allowed to share? 5) In the thesaurus file, what are the potential consequences, if any, if several terms, identified from different documents, are replaced by one term? For example, if the labels “co evolution” (from document 1), “evolutionary function” (from document 2), “cities evolf” (from document 2), and “long term evolution” (from document 3) are replaced by “evolution”, will VOSviewer then show “evolution” coming from 3 documents (for binary counting)? And how will this affect the relevance score and the clustering? Thank you!
    Reply
    • Ludo Waltman May 8th, 2022 8:58 am
      In exceptional cases the plural to singular conversion may fail. You can then use a thesaurus file to perform the conversion.
      In your example, when you use the thesaurus file, VOSviewer will indeed consider the term 'evolution' to occur in each of the three documents, leading to three occurrences of this term in the case of binary counting. The results of the next steps in the analysis, such as the calculation of relevance scores and the clustering, will be identical to the results that would have been obtained if the term 'evolution' had occurred in each of the three documents and no thesaurus file had been used.
      In VOSviewer Online, the 'Share' button appears only when you use VOSviewer Online to view a visualization that is already available online. It won't appear when you use VOSviewer Online to view a visualization that is stored locally on your computer.
      Reply
      • Catherine May 8th, 2022 12:40 pm
        Thank you!
        Reply
  • Therese Tikkanen May 2nd, 2022 11:11 am
    Hi! I'm currently using VOSviewer in my thesis and I stumbled upon a question mark. In the analysis tab I've experimented with the clustering and I can't choose if I should change the min. cluster size or the resolution to get my desired amount of clusters (around 9, to better view and describe the clusters). I'm not sure if my desired amount of clusters is a question of detail or simplicity. Does anyone have any advice in which of these modifications are better to use?
    Co-citation map based on min. cluster size (9 clusters): https://tinyurl.com/y5fjcvhr
    Same map based on resolution (9 clusters): https://tinyurl.com/y6e6zdv6
    There is a difference but I can't tell what the difference is or what it means, if that makes sense. Any help would be greatly appriceated!
    Reply
    • Therese Tikkanen May 2nd, 2022 11:27 am
      I just saw the first map has 6 clusters and not 9, excuse my confusion. I'm still curious regarding the choice between resolution and min. cluster size though!
      Reply
      • Ludo Waltman May 2nd, 2022 12:02 pm
        My advice is to rely primarily on the resolution parameter and to use the minimum cluster size parameter only to get rid of very small clusters (e.g., containing fewer than 5 items). Furthermore, my advice is to choose the parameter values in such a way that you obtain a level of granularity that fits well with the question you want to answer. For some questions you may need a high level of granularity (i.e., a relatively large number of clusters), while for other questions a low level of granularity (i.e., a relatively small number of clusters) may be more suitable.
        Reply
  • ‫נורית רוזוליו‬‎ April 29th, 2022 4:40 pm
    there are difficulties in sharing some of the maps, and I can't understand why it share one and not the other....
    for exam:
    https://tinyurl.com/y3faey3g- the link can be shared.
    https://tinyurl.com/yxq6xl63- the link can't be shared!
    I'll appreciate any clarification...
    Reply
    • nurit rozolyo May 2nd, 2022 12:14 pm
      can you please answer me?
      Reply
Build on Applepie CMS by Waltman Development