  VOS is a new mapping technique that can serve as an alternative to the
well-known technique of multidimensional scaling. We present an extensive
comparison between the use of multidimensional scaling and the use of VOS for
constructing bibliometric maps. In our theoretical analysis, we show the
mathematical relation between the two techniques. In our experimental analysis,
we use the techniques for constructing maps of authors, journals, and keywords.
Two commonly used approaches to bibliometric mapping, both based on
multidimensional scaling, turn out to produce maps that suffer from artifacts.
Maps constructed using VOS turn out not to have this problem. We conclude that
in general maps constructed using VOS provide a more satisfactory
representation of a data set than maps constructed using well-known
multidimensional scaling approaches.
