Analysis of information technology research trends using topic modeling

IT's rapid progress and far-reaching impact on other scientific disciplines have not only necessitated significant changes in its own subjects but have also catalyzed extensive changes in the form, amount, and methodology of research in other fields. The objective of the present investigation was to analyze research conducted in the realm of information technology, extract its central themes, and furnish scientometric data pertaining to these themes.

This paper explores the topics of the information technology field by extracting and categorizing the relationships between commonly used terms and their temporal evolution. To achieve this, the researchers employed topic modeling, a well-established method for clustering textual data. Topic modeling algorithms utilize statistical methods to analyze and interpret the primary words in documents, allowing for the examination of the presented issues and their interconnections and changes over time. Considering the rapid changes in the field of information technology, this paper drew upon materials spanning the last decade, including 10,000 papers sourced from top-tier journals featured in the Web of Science database.

The study extracted trends in keyword changes over the past decade and identified important keywords for each paper cluster after grouping them. The papers within the information technology domain were then categorized into eight themes, including hardware, communications, networks, and intelligent applications such as the Internet of Things. The study found that frequently used keywords have been continuously changing over time. The paper highlights that emerging keywords, including the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and Big Data, along with work areas such as Machine Learning and Deep Learning, are shaping the definition of information technology fields in the new era.

Given the shift in research emphasis from hardware and communication to analysis and practical applications, it is likely that future scientific fields will focus on creating value through data analysis and human-machine communication in everyday applications, and information technology's relevance in other sciences will become more apparent. Future research can also concentrate on comparing global trends in information technology with domestic research, enabling the evaluation of the gap between the country's research and that of the world.