2019
150 years of Nature

About the work

In early 2019, Barabási got an unexpected request from the creative director of the venerable scientific journal Nature, asking if he would design the cover of the 150th-anniversary issue. Barabasi’s work had been featured on Nature’s cover many times before, but always as an accompaniment to the publication of one of his papers.

Team

150 Years of Nature cover art and video stills, by A.-L. Barabási, A. J. Gates, A. Grishchenko, Q. Ke, M. Martino, and O. Varol, as published in “Nature’s Reach: Narrow Work Has Broad Impact,” Nature (November 6, 2019)

This request, a commission, was different. The BarabásiLab began the process with a data-driven analysis of the whole history of the journal. The team then mapped out the massive co-citation network connecting the 88,000 papers Nature had published since 1900. Two papers were linked if another scientific publication had cited them both. The visualization of the network reveals the highly multidisciplinary scope of the journal and illuminates how various disciplines, which appear in different colors, are co-cited. 

The original plan of a single cover image turned into a multimedia project consisting of a foldout cover of the co-citation network, and a three-page image illustrating the impact of several iconic Nature publications. The project was also accompanied by a video, and an interactive website.

While this map represents data specific to one journal, its bigger takeaways are about how discovery informs and alters our thinking, how ideas are born when disciplines collide, and how the knowledge that leads to the emergence of schools of thought is itself an enlightening and vibrant topic of inquiry.

Black and white rendering of the co-citation network generated during the design process.
Black and white rendering of the co-citation network generated during the design process.
Black and white rendering of the co-citation network generated during the design process.
Zoom in on one of the reference trees, generated while in the process of developing the structures.
Front Cover
fold out spread of inner cover.

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