  Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) and Multi-RPYS provide
algorithmic approaches to reconstructing the intellectual histories of
scientific fields. With this brief communication, we describe a technical
advancement for developing research historiographies by introducing RPYS i/o,
an online tool for performing standard RPYS and Multi-RPYS analyses
interactively (at http://comins.leydesdorff.net/). The tool enables users to
explore seminal works underlying a research field and to plot the influence of
these seminal works over time. This suite of visualizations offers the
potential to analyze and visualize the myriad of temporal dynamics of
scientific influence, such as citation classics, sleeping beauties, and the
dynamics of research fronts. We demonstrate the features of the tool by
analyzing--as an example--the references in documents published in the journal
Philosophy of Science.
