How scientific literature has been evolving over the time? A novel statistical approach using tracking verbal-based methods

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel statistical approach to analyze the evolution of scientific literature by tracking verbal-based methods, focusing on vocabulary changes, influential articles, and new terminology over 18 years.

Contribution

It presents a new statistical methodology for analyzing the evolution of scientific abstracts and vocabulary over time, applied to SLE literature.

Findings

Vocabulary complexity has increased over time.

Identified influential articles in the field.

Detected articles introducing new terms.

Abstract

This paper provides a global vision of the scientific publications related with the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), taking as starting point abstracts of articles. Through the time, abstracts have been evolving towards higher complexity on used terminology, which makes necessary the use of sophisticated statistical methods and answering questions including: how vocabulary is evolving through the time? Which ones are most influential articles? And which one are the articles that introduced new terms and vocabulary? To answer these, we analyze a dataset composed by 506 abstracts and downloaded from 115 different journals and cover a 18 year-period.