cartolex

cartolex maps a body of texts by the words of their authors. Give it the people of a field (a list, a laboratory, an institution): it collects their texts from open services, finds the vocabulary they actually use, places every person, organisation and text in a lexical space, groups the vocabulary into themes, and draws it all as an atlas you explore and share as a website that opens offline.

Who talks the same. Distances in that space measure how much people, teams or institutions talk the same about their subject, whether or not they work together; the co-authorship network, drawn on the same map, shows who does. The map shows what people write about, never how good their work is. It was made for research fields; any texts whose authors are known will do, the articles of journalists for instance.

No programming is needed: everything happens in the app, in your web browser, on your own computer, and your data stays there (Privacy and personal data). These pages come with the app, for the version you have installed (the question mark at the top of every screen).

How a map is made

Each step is a stage of the build, which reruns only what your changes affect. What cartolex does, in its own words explains the words the app uses; About cartolex gives the method in one page, and References the works and software it is built on.

Where to start

Start here. What cartolex does, in its own words (ten minutes of reading), then Installing cartolex, then Your first map, with the demo project: a map of an invented field, built in a few minutes, to try every screen without risk.

Tutorials, step by step in the app, each with what you need and what you should see:

• Your first map, with the demo project: from the start screen to a map, on the demo project;

• Map a laboratory or an institution: take the people of a laboratory or an institution, collect their texts, build;

• Start from a list of names: import a list of people, check who is who, merge the duplicates, collect;

• Clean the keywords with an AI copilot: clean the keywords with an AI assistant, without sending any text;

• Shape the themes: rename, move, merge and split the themes, add a level, apply;

• Explore the map: find people, follow links, compare, export distances, save a view;

• Share a site: build a website of the map, with names or pseudonyms.

Guides explain one subject in depth: Collecting people and texts, How keywords emerge, Building a project, Privacy and personal data, Very large projects: a national campaign.

Reference: References, How to cite cartolex, The project format, cartolex-project/1, Sizes and machines, Hosting the app.

For developers: the command line, the programming interface, the engine and the checks, in the last part of the menu (The command line first).