Abstract
Proceedings of journal and conference papers are good sources of big textual data to examine research trends in various branches of science. The contents, usually unstructured in nature, require fast machine-learning algorithms to be deciphered. Exploratory analysis through text mining usually provides the descriptive nature of the contents but lacks quantification of the topics and their correlations. Topic models are algorithms designed to discover the main theme or trend in massive collections of unstructured documents. Through the use of a structural topic model, an extension of latent Dirichlet allocation, this study introduced distinct topic models on the basis of the relative frequencies of the words used in the abstracts of 15,357 TRB compendium papers. With data from 7 years (2008 through 2014) of TRB annual meeting compendium papers, the 20 most dominant topics emerged from a bag of 4 million words. The findings of this study contributed to the understanding of topical trends in the complex and evolving field of transportation engineering research.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
