Almaworld: Data visualization to support international research collaborations

Monitoring and evaluating research activities and their results can be intended as initiatives devoted to support universities and research institutes policymakers and governments while enhancing international relationships with colleagues from foreign affiliations. In this context, the integration of data coming from multiple and different sources, as well as the adoption of data visualization techniques can play a strategic role, letting the users browse official and reliable data by means of proper and effective user interface and interaction mechanisms. In this paper, we present AlmaWorld, a web application designed and developed to map the international co-authorships of the professors and the researchers of the University of Bologna, by exploiting two dimensions: the spatial and the temporal ones. The paper presents the approaches we have adopted in the design phase and a prototype we have developed.