Guide and methodology
How to use the Atlas.
A concise guide to the research scope, graph controls, data limits, and update cycle.
What does the Atlas include?
The focal collection includes papers published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and the Journal of Management Information Systems. For each focal paper, the Atlas maps the works it cites and the works that cite it.
Why is Management Science not included?
The Atlas has a deliberately partial information-systems focus. Management Science is important to IS scholarship, but its wider management-science remit would substantially change the project scope and obscure the focal IS-journal comparison.
Why is JAIS not included?
JAIS was evaluated during collection, but it has roughly an order of magnitude more indexed records than the other focal journals while delivering comparatively underwhelming citation concentration. Including it would dominate the interface without serving this narrower top-journal comparison.
Why do external papers have less metadata?
External cited and citing papers are included as linkable graph neighbors with basic title, venue, year, DOI, and paper-link information where available. The much larger external universe makes collecting and serving full metadata for every one of those papers operationally impractical.
How do I use the graph?
Choose one or more journals, then narrow the period, topic, or subfield. Select a focal paper to open its direct citation neighborhood. In a focused view, turn on the left-to-right arrangement to place cited sources on the left and citing papers on the right. Drag nodes, use the zoom buttons or scroll wheel, and select another focal-journal node to refocus the graph.
How do search and downloads work?
Use Search & extract to combine metadata filters. Active filters appear below the controls and can be removed one at a time. Download result sets as indented JSON or CSV. Each focal-paper result also provides separate JSON and CSV downloads for its cited and citing papers.
When is the database updated?
The intended update schedule is every three months. The precise latest database timestamp appears in the footer. Citation counts and links can change between OpenAlex snapshots.
How should I cite the data source?
The Atlas uses OpenAlex. Please also cite: Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R. (2022). OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts. arXiv:2205.01833.
How can I share feedback?
Please share feedback, corrections, feature requests, and ideas at mohammads.abolhasani@gmail.com. Your feedback will help guide the next update.