Time series forecasting has been performed for decades in both science and industry. The forecasting models have evolved steadily over time. Statistical methods have been used for many years and were later complemented by neural network approaches. Currently, hybrid approaches are increasingly presented, aiming to combine both methods’ advantages. These hybrid forecasting methods could lead to more accurate predictions and enhance and improve visual analytics systems for making decisions or for supporting the decision-making process. In this work, we conducted a systematic literature review using the PRISMA methodology and investigated various hybrid forecasting approaches in detail. The exact procedure for searching and filtering and the databases in which we performed the search were documented and supplemented by a PRISMA flow chart. From a total of 1435 results, we included 21 works in this review through various filtering steps and exclusion criteria. We examined these works in detail and collected the quality of the prediction results. We summarized the error values in a table to investigate whether hybrid forecasting approaches deliver better results. We concluded that all investigated hybrid forecasting methods perform better than individual ones. Based on the results of the PRISMA study, the possible applications of hybrid prediction approaches in visual analytics systems for decision making are discussed and illustrated using an exemplary visualization.

Studies have shown that although having more information improves the quality of decision-making, information overload causes adverse effects on decision quality. Visual analytics and recommendation systems counter this adverse effect on decision-making. Accurately identifying relevant information can reduce the noise during exploration and improve decision-making. These countermeasures also help scientists make correct decisions during research. We present a novel and intuitive approach that supports real-time collaboration. In this paper, we instantiate our approach to scientific writing and propose a system that supports scientists. The proposed system analyzes text as it is being written and recommends similar publications based on the written text through similarity algorithms. By analyzing text as it is being written, it is possible to provide targeted real-time recommendations to improve decision-making during research by finding relevant publications that might not have been otherwise found in the initial research phase. This approach allows the recommendations to evolve throughout the writing process, as recommendations begin on a paragraph-based level and progress throughout the entire written text. This approach yields various possible use cases discussed in our work. Furthermore, the recommendations are presented in a visual analytics system to further improve scientists’ decision-making capabilities.

Visual Analytics enables solving complex analytical tasks by coupling interactive visualizations and machine learning approaches. Besides the analytical reasoning enabled through Visual Analytics, the exploration of data plays an essential role. The exploration process can be supported through similarity-based approaches that enable finding similar data to those annotated in the context of visual exploration. We propose in this paper a process of annotation in the context of exploration that leads to labeled vectors-of-interest and enables finding similar publications based on interest vectors. The generation and labeling of the interest vectors are performed automatically by the Visual Analytics system and lead to finding similar papers and categorizing the annotated papers. With this approach, we provide a categorized similarity search based on an automatically labeled interest matrix in Visual Analytics.

Systematic reviews play an essential role in various disciplines. Particularly, in biomedical sciences, systematic reviews according to a predefined schema and protocol are how related literature is analyzed. Although a protocol-based systematic review is replicable and provides the required information to reproduce each step and refine them, such a systematic review is time-consuming and may get complex. To face this challenge, automatic methods can be applied that support researchers in their systematic analysis process. The combination of artificial intelligence for automatic information extraction from scientific literature with interactive visualizations as a Visual Analytics system can lead to sophisticated analysis and protocoling of the review process. We introduce in this paper a novel Visual Analytics approach and system that enables researchers to visually search and explore scientific publications and generate a protocol based on the PRISMA protocol and the PRISMA statement.

Studies have shown that collaboration in scientific fields is rising and considered enormously important. However, collaboration has proved to be challenging for various reasons, among others, the requirements for human-machine workflows. The importance of scientific collaboration lies in the complexity of the challenges that are faced today. The more complex the challenge, the more scientists should work together. The current form of collaboration in the scientific community is not as intelligent as it should be. Scientists have to multitask with various applications, often losing cognitive focus. Collaboration itself is very nearsighted as it is usually conducted not solely based on expertise but instead on social or local networks. We introduce a single-source visual collaboration approach based on learning methods in this work. We use machine learning and natural language processing approaches to improve the traditional research and development process and create a system that facilitates and encourages collaboration based on expertise, enhancing the research collaboration process in many ways. Our approach combines collaborative Visual Analytics with enhanced collaboration techniques to support researchers from different disciplines.