Although there are numerous uses for information visualization, HistCite performs one specific application: it converts bibliographies into diagrams called historiographs.
By changing the time frame of the analysis, the resulting historiograph can form a snapshot of a specific period or an in-depth look at the total history of a subject.
Once a historiograph is created for a bibliography, it is easier to see and understand the subject's key publication events, their chronology, and their relative influence.
A wide variety of professionals who need to analyze the published literature use HistCite for analysis, for example: researchers, historians, journal editors, librarians and patent lawyers.
HistCite is currently set up to import bibliographies created by searches of the Web of Science database offered by Thomson-Reuters Scientific.