Facebook map is interesting because the people are geolocated, and friendship is usually personal - interesting to see how the digital revolution has affected that.<p>Scientific papers are about ideas not people. Unless you're looking for a job, or a coffee shop likely to be high in PhDs, not sure this is the right projection.<p>How about an idea-centric map of some kind? Or place researchers in an imaginary spherical idea-space, let us see who are the stars, who are peripheral.<p>Anyway I think forcing the map to geography is disguising more interesting patterns.