What Were GIScience Scholars Interested in During the Past Decades?

摘要

GIScience as the Earth's New Science has developed for decades since it was formally proposed in the 1990s. What GIScience scholars were interested in during the past time and how the relevant research topics have evolved may contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the development of this new science, which can help to plan the future direction that GIScience goes to. We use Topic Modeling to infer 50 research topics based on 16,096 abstracts of the articles published in 17 relevant GIScience journals during the period of 1990-2017. The topic patterns of the journals as well as the research trends over space and time are discovered in both quantitative and qualitative ways. The inferred topics reflect multidisciplinary characteristics of GIScience. The uncovered trends draw a pattern that traditional research topics show a decreasing trend while those topics related to emerging technologies and earth issues are getting more popular. It may imply that GIScience is technology-driven and also considers practical issues related to the earth. In addition, a non-periodic pattern on research trend in the field of GIScience is captured, while a period of 3-5 years seems to be a life circle of the popularity of a topic. The findings enable us to better understand how GIScience has progressed and plan its future direction. Meanwhile, this work can help editors develop policies in considering the nature of publications in their journals.