Analyzing the Evolution of Interdisciplinary Areas

Abstract

Recently, various new areas of research have been of great interest to researchers. As these areas are highly based on academic and industrial needs, it is necessary to examine the change and evolution in research. This study proposed a framework for identifying emerging areas and their evolution. The proposed framework suggests that latent Dirichlet allocation is applied to identify emerging topics and their networks in such interdisciplinary areas. The simulation for empirical network analysis was then applied to the identified topic networks to terminate continuous evolution. The proposed framework is applied to a smart city, which is one of the most interdisciplinary and fast-evolving areas. These findings indicate that the evolution of smart transportation and smart grids is likely to be the focus. The findings also indicate that newly emerging research may lack openness and diversity. This study contributes to further investigate research trends and planning research strategies for new and interdisciplinary areas.