What kind of research topics emerged in the biomedical domain?: A perspective from newly added subject terms in a thesaurus

Lu, Kun

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/106533 Copy

Description

Title

What kind of research topics emerged in the biomedical domain?: A perspective from newly added subject terms in a thesaurus

Author(s)

Lu, Kun

Issue Date

2020-03-23

Keyword(s)

• Emerging topics
• Thesaurus
• Medical Subject Headings
• New subject terms

Abstract

Understanding what kind of research topics will emerge in scientific domains has implications for researchers, policy makers, and industry. Existing studies on emerging topics generally approach the problem from the publication perspective, that is, to retrieve a set of publications and identify emerging topics from them. This study aims to offer a different perspective to understand emerging topics. By tracing the newly added subject terms in a thesaurus, this study provides insights into what kind of topics emerged and what did not. This study found that economic, biomedical, or social impact is important for a biomedical topic to emerge in addition to the common features used for identifying emerging topics. More attention was paid to topics that have direct impact on humans than on other species. This aspect is largely neglected in the literature. The findings from this study have implications for designing predictors for emerging research topics in the biomedical domain.

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

iConference 2020 Proceedings

Type of Resource

• text
• image

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106533

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2020 Kun Lu

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