Abstract

Our research aim is to identify new scholarly ideas reflective of the knowledge being imparted and developed through published works. To do this, we identify new terms and term phrases that vary in how frequently they are taken up in ensuing texts. This requires identifying new ideas that emerge across diverse fields and that get variably adopted over time.
Given the range of scholarly fields, the ideas reflected by new words and phrases can be quite varied (Toulmin 1972). Chemistry concerns chemicals and bonds; physics concerns states, processes, and names of physical laws and propositions; sociology concerns social arrangements (variously named) and concepts; and history and classics concern places, persons, and periods. To capture the heterogeneity of ideas presented in the published texts of many fields, we develop a means to identify coherent terms or phrases concerning scholarly content. This covers a broad range of terms and term-phrases (eg, ideas, concepts, propositions, phenomena, methods, data, and technologies) that are overwhelmingly nouns and noun phrases (Kuhn 2000: Chapter 4).

Date

2023

Authors

Mengjie Cheng, Daniel Scott Smith, Xiang Ren, Hancheng Cao, Sanne Smith, Daniel A McFarland

Journal

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Volume

88