Installing VOSviewer on Windows 11 Home
A software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks
Steps for installing VOSviewer on Windows 11 Home are given in this story, which should be straight forward and easy to follow.
Introduction
The increasing the need in technical support for data handling and visualization solutions, which is triggered by today data and information complexity, since they come from multiple sources, huge in size and of different formats, challenges the field of bibliometric analysis (Bukar et al., 2023). Then, two Leiden scholars Ludo Waltman and Nees-Jan van Eck invent the VOSviewer (De Jon & Dennis Bus), which is a freely available computer program for constructing and viewing bibliometric maps that pays special attention to the graphical representation of bibliometric maps, where it is able to construct and display a co-citation map of 5,000 major scientific journals (van Eck & Waltman, 2009). It can obtain content from databases with certain formats, e.g. Scopus CSV and RIS, Web of Sciences TXT and RIS (DeGroote, 2024).
Download
Visit https://www.vosviewer.com/ to download the installer, where current version is 1.6.20.
Click the Download VOSviewer button to proceed.
It shows installer of VOSviewer version 1.6.20 released on 31 Oct 2023, which supports various Operating System (OS), e.g. Microsoft Windows, macOS, and other systems. Choose the first option.
The browser will download VOSviewer_1.6.20_exe.zip file to your local storage.
Click the [↗] icon on the most right side to open the download folder.
The VOSviewer_1.6.20_exe.zip has the size about 61,732 KB as shown.
Java
From VOSviewer website there is a requirement that you have installed Java 8 on your system.
Using cmd following information is obtained.
It shows that the system has Java 21. And according to discussion with GPT-4o, it might be compatible.
Your can further refine the discussion here.
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Assuming that installed Java 21 might work, then proceed to install VOSviewer.
Install
Create VOSviewer foler on C:\ or other drive or in folder you like.
Open VOSviewer_1.6.20_exe.zip file located previously in Downloads folder.
Copy all files to C:\VOSviewer folder.
Wait until the process completed.
All files are copied.
Launch
To launch the application, click VOSviewer.exe in the C:\VOSviewer folder.
Wait until the application opened.
VOSviewer window is opened.
There is Navigation Menu on the lest side of the window. In the Info section there are two buttons, Manual and About VOSviewer.
About
You can click About VOSviewer button to launch information about the application.
Click Ok button to close the pop-up window.
Manual
Click Manual button to open the provided manual.
The manual will be shown in a web browser or other linked PDF viewer application.
Close
To close the window. Find × icon on the top right corner of the window and click it.
Click × to close the window of VOSviewer.
Summaries
After reading this story you are able to
- download installer for VOSviewer version 1.6.20 released on 31 Oct 2023 to your local storage;
- unzip content of
VOSviewer_1.6.20_exe.zipto a desire folder; - check version compability of installed Java on your computer;
- launch VOSviewer 1.6.20, show About VOSviewer window, and diplay the manual; and
- close VOSviewer window.
Following parts are additional if you want to launch VOSviewer via command prompt cmd.
Set environment variables
Press Windows key ⊞ and type Environment.
Press Enter to open other window.
Click Environment Variables… button.
Choose Path and click Edit button.
Click New, and type C:\VOSviewer and click OK button. It will close current window and go back to previous
Click OK button to close this window and proceed to previous window.
Click OK to close this window.
Launch with CLI
Press Windows key ⊞ and type cmd.
Press Enter to open it.
Type vosviewer and press Enter.
VOSviewer is being opened.
You can close it now. This way might be simpler than you have to open the folder where it was installed, e.g. C:\VOSviewer and click the icon VOSviewer.exe in the folder.
