A community contribution you can build on.
An open atlas. A resource for active research.
The Research Atlas brings people, projects, institutions and research outputs into a shared, explorable picture of disinformation research. Its value is not limited to what you can see on this website: you can take the data into your own research, combine perspectives and build something new.
Use it. Credit it. Help it grow. We make our original atlas metadata and database compilation available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), within the scope explained below. Openness is part of the resource’s purpose, not an optional extra.
Built to be used, not just browsed
Discovering who works on a question is a beginning. The Atlas also supports active investigation: follow a topic across disciplines, inspect recorded relationships, compare methods and research approaches, or find resources that could inform your next experiment.
- Explore: use the map, filters and full-screen networks to find expertise, initiatives and complementary perspectives.
- Analyse: download a chart or matching entries from Atlas Insights, keep a dated snapshot and investigate it with your own tools.
- Build: combine the metadata with other appropriately licensed sources, develop visualisations, prepare teaching material or investigate research gaps.
- Connect: return to the live Atlas for updates, original sources and the people behind the entries.
You do not need our separate permission for reuse covered by CC BY 4.0. Sharing and adaptation, including commercial reuse, are permitted under its terms. Your own analysis does not have to use the same licence.
Give credit and make your analysis traceable
When sharing material covered by the licence, give appropriate credit, link to CC BY 4.0, retain supplied attribution notices and indicate whether you changed the material. Credit must not suggest that the Atlas or its contributors endorse your work.
For scholarly work, we also recommend recording your export or access date, the fields and filters you used, and any cleaning, exclusions or transformations. Keep the snapshot used for your analysis, subject to the applicable rights and privacy requirements: the live Atlas will continue to change.
Suggested citation: disinfo.science and contributors. Research Atlas. https://disinfo.science/research-atlas/. Snapshot or access date: [insert date]. CC BY 4.0, subject to the stated scope and exceptions.
If you analyse an individual project, publication or dataset, cite its original authors and sources as appropriate as well. The Atlas helps you discover research; it does not replace the underlying scholarly record.
Help the next researcher go further
Make the community’s work more visible: learn how to share project and researcher cards in posts, presentations and newsletters. The Atlas is a gift of time, knowledge and curation from a growing community. Each accurate description, source link and correction makes that shared effort more useful.
- Add or maintain an entry: introduce your project, initiative, institution or individual research profile. You do not need to belong to a funded project.
- Improve the evidence: supply source links, documented dates, research methods, output information and clearly described relationships. Leave unknown facts blank.
- Share what you create: tell us about papers, teaching resources, visualisations or tools made possible by the Atlas, so others can discover and build on them.
Giving improvements back is warmly encouraged; it is not an additional licence condition. CC BY 4.0 requires attribution where it applies, not that you publish your own dataset, return modifications to us or seek our approval.
When contributing, write original descriptions or use material you are authorised to share, and identify third-party sources and any reuse restrictions. Public visibility of a contact address is separate from permission to use that address for unsolicited bulk communication.
Read the landscape with its limits
This is a living, exploratory research resource, not an exhaustive census, a ranking or a validated measure of the whole field. Entries reflect contributor and curator knowledge, with uneven geographic, disciplinary and metadata coverage. A missing field means unknown, not absent. Counts are not measures of quality, impact or research prevalence.
In network views, solid orange edges represent recorded participation or project relationships. Dashed links to shared terms help reveal thematic connections. Neither is independent verification of collaboration: inspect the relationship label, evidence and original sources before drawing conclusions.
Documented date precision is retained. A resource may be planned, restricted or described only through a repository or catalogue page; a link does not establish access rights or a reuse licence.
What the licence covers
The CC BY 4.0 offer covers the copyright and applicable database rights that disinfo.science holds or is authorised to license in its original atlas metadata and database compilation, except where another licence or rights notice is stated. Contributor-supplied material is covered only to the extent that its reuse has been authorised.
Linked publications, datasets, software, logos, photographs and other third-party materials retain their own rights and licences. Their appearance in an Atlas entry does not relicense them. Preserve source and credit notices, check the original material and clarify any uncertain permissions before redistributing protected content. Facts may not require a copyright licence, while database rights may still apply to substantial extraction.
CC BY 4.0 does not grant privacy, publicity or trademark permissions that the Atlas does not hold. Information is provided without warranties; verify important details with the original sources or the people responsible for an entry.
Read the CC BY 4.0 summary · Read the full licence
An open resource becomes stronger through use
We welcome careful analysis, useful criticism and new connections. Use the Atlas to ask better questions, credit the shared work that made your investigation possible, and help the next person start further ahead.