A Survey On Annotations In Information Visualization: Empirical Studies, Applications And Challenges

Annotations are widely used in information visualization to guide attention, clarify patterns, and support interpretation. We present a comprehensive survey of 191 research papers describing empirical studies, tools, techniques, and systems that incorporate annotations across various visualization contexts. Based on a structured analysis, we characterize annotations by their types, generation methods, and targets, and examine their use across four primary application domains: user engagement, storytelling, collaboration, and exploratory data analysis. We also discuss key trends, practical challenges, and open research directions. These findings offer a foundation for designing more effective annotation systems and advancing future research on annotation in visualization. An interactive web resource detailing the surveyed papers is available at https://shape-vis.github.io/annotation star/.

Md Dilshadur Rahman, Bhavana Doppalapudi, Ghulam Jilani Quadri, and Paul Rosen. A Survey On Annotations In Information Visualization: Empirical Studies, Applications And Challenges. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2025.

@article{rahman2025survey,
  title = {A Survey on Annotations in Information Visualization: Empirical Studies,
    Applications and Challenges},
  author = {Rahman, Md Dilshadur and Doppalapudi, Bhavana and Quadri, Ghulam Jilani and
    Rosen, Paul},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  year = {2025},
  note = {textit{Presented at IEEE VIS 2026.}},
  abstract = {Annotations are widely used in information visualization to guide
    attention, clarify patterns, and support interpretation. We present a comprehensive
    survey of 191 research papers describing empirical studies, tools, techniques, and
    systems that incorporate annotations across various visualization contexts. Based on a
    structured analysis, we characterize annotations by their types, generation methods, and
    targets, and examine their use across four primary application domains: user engagement,
    storytelling, collaboration, and exploratory data analysis. We also discuss key trends,
    practical challenges, and open research directions. These findings offer a foundation
    for designing more effective annotation systems and advancing future research on
    annotation in visualization. An interactive web resource detailing the surveyed papers
    is available at https://shape-vis.github.io/annotation star/.}
}