Gaining a rapid overview of an emerging scientific topic is an increasingly common task. Visual overviews that show temporal patterns of document publication and citation links among documents can help researchers and analysts to see the rate of growth of topics, identify key documents, and understand influences across subdisciplines. This paper applies a novel network visualization tool based on meaningful layouts of nodes to present research fronts and show citation links that indicate influences across sub-disciplines. The two-dimensional layouts and user control of link visibility enable rapid exploration. We assess the value of our tool for this application by conducting a case study with four domain experts over a two month period.