title How to make a pretty graph of the geographic distribution of academic by topic
user virgil
ip 192.12.12.149
vol 1
lock ********

We want to make a graph with a point for every .edu .  The size of each point will be proportional to the number of academic papers on subject TOPIC.

Here's what you do.

/list( -num
* Get a list of all .edu's and their long/lat coordinates.  The easiest way to do this is to use something like the ip2location.com database or maxmind.com.  You'll find there are about 2,000 different .edu's.

* We now have a list of all .edu's and their location on a map, now to determine the size of the points.  Use the Google API to run a google scholar query of for every .edu:

/tt http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=site%3ASOMEEDU.edu+TOPIC

If you were interested in the generic distribution of academic PDFs without regard to a topic, just leave the TOPIC field blank, for example:

/tt http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=site%3ASOMEEDU.edu


* Count the number of hits you get, this will determine the size of the data point.

* Plot using Google Maps.  The geo coordinates determine the location of each point, the number of hits on Google Scholar determines the size/color of the point.  The Google Maps API supports doing both out of the box.

* Done.
/list)