The column view page shows locations of expertise in a given topic: expertise that rests in people, in institutions, and in geographical areas.
Each location has a horizontal bar next to it. The black part of the bar shows the relative amount of expertise that each location has. The wider the black part of a bar, the more expertise there is.
The black width of each bar is sized in proportion to the most-expert location in the same column. For example, the bar-width for each institution is measured against the bar-width of the institution having the most expertise.
For topics such as breast cancer, which have a very large number of associated articles, even a very thin black bar may indicate a considerable degree of expertise, because the total number of articles is so large.
As you move your mouse over the locations in the column view, you will see that others become yellow-highlighted. This highlighting shows all the locations that are somehow related to the location under the mouse pointer.
If you click on an author, a new "Map" page will open that contains information about the author. If you click on any other location, the page will be re-drawn to show only the locations (and authors) that are related to the location you clicked.
This view is a carry-over from earlier versions of ExpertMapper. It does not seem especially useful now, and will probably go away, unless protests arise.
This works very much like the World Articles tab. The difference is that the articles here are associated with a particular geographic locale, or institution, or author -- not the entire world.
This page looks complicated, but it is really trying to answer only one question: Where does a particular author work?
ExpertMapper cannot tell you with assurance where any expert works. The closest it can come is listing one or more institutions where the expert may work. You can then use the institution's online phone book to find the expert. You may have to try several phone books (if available), even at the same institution.
For any expert, ExpertMapper will list institutions and/or geographical locales where the expert may work. (A few experts may not have such lists.) If a telephone icon appears in this list, then ExpertMapper will be able to point you to an online phone book for that institution.
If searching institutional phone books does not work, the next best bet is to perform Google searches. Several Google searches are pre-formed for you, each relating to a specific institution or geographical locale.
Do not overlook the lower part of the "map" sub-view, because it can be the most helpful part. It simply lists the affiliation field for every paper that the author has written on the topic of interest.
Note: A "probable" location for an author is the location of an article on which the author was the first author. A "possible" location is the location when the author was not the first author. This distinction is necessary because most papers nowadays have multiple authors, and Pubmed records only the location of the first author.
The numbers in the table of probable and possible locations for an author represent the number of papers published each year in which the named location was probable and possible, respectively (as defined above).
Attempts to show a cartographic-type map for the location.