The Global Research Map project grew out of an idea from the NOC Advisory Council for the National Science Foundations' International Network Research Connections (IRNC) program as a way to show a dynamic overview of major research networks and their interconnects around the world. The Map is based on the GlobalNOC Atlas project which is a JavaScript library for visualizing Networks and their live data. The Global Research Map uses the Atlas JavaScript library and a custom backend for storing and retrieving the different map layers.