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Timeline map of a collection of journal papers from the specialty of anthrax research. Groups of topic related papers are plotted in horizontal tracks by publication date. A tree on the left shows how topic groups are related. Topic labels are on the right. Important events in anthrax research are noted on the plot. Description of Unique Features: The timeline shows emergence and obsolescence of research topics, and also shows historically important papers as large circles, and currently important papers as red-filled circles. Importance is measured by the number of times a paper has been cited. Note the emergence of several new topics at the bottom of the plot, which show the reponse of the research community to the anthrax postal bioterror attacks in late 2001. Visual Perception or Design Principles Applied: "Continuance" is used to communicate temporal relationships, "proximity" is used to show related topics, and "alignment" is used to group related papers, "size" is used to communicate importance of papers. Cognitive Principles or Metaphors Employed: Hierarchical sequencing of information is used to communicate the overal structure of research topics being displayed. Data Used: The raw data is a list of references cited by each paper in the collection. This data is processed to find the number of common references cited by each pair of papers. Data Analysis Techniques Applied: Hierarchical agglomerative clustering, based on common references cited by paper pairs, is used to group papers into topics.