Shifting Interests: Changes in the Lexical Semantics of ED-MEDIA publications

Large research networks naturally form complex communities with overlapping but not identical expertise. To map the distribution of professional competence in field, the lexical semantics expressed in research articles published in a representative, large-scale conference such as ED-MEDIA can be investigated and changes in the topics covered can be tracked over time.

Attached you will find a preprint of a paper that we have submitted to the review process of a journal last week, within which we compare two years (2000 and 2008) to contrast the change of the field. In both cases, first a quantitative investigation is applied, directly followed by a two-fold qualitative analysis. Results indicate that the field has opened up to new areas, thus diversifying research; at the same time, certain terminology disappears as interests shift and research is finalised for some of the underlying problems.

We would love to discuss these results with you and would especially be interested if you draw the same conclusions!

At this year's conference, there will be another paper complementing this analysis with a (co-)authorship and (co-)citation analysis. Watch out for the talk by Xavier Ochoa, Gonzalo Méndez, and Erik Duval on "Who we are: Analysis of 10 years of the ED-MEDIA Conference".

Looking forward to your input,

Best,
Fridolin Wild