Random drift versus selection in academic vocabulary: an evolutionary analysis of published keywords

Bentley, R.A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003057

Random drift versus selection in academic vocabulary: an evolutionary analysis of published keywords

Bentley, R.A.

Authors

R.A. Bentley

Abstract

The evolution of vocabulary in academic publishing is characterized via keyword frequencies recorded in the ISI Web of Science citations database. In four distinct case-studies, evolutionary analysis of keyword frequency change through time is compared to a model of random copying used as the null hypothesis, such that selection may be identified against it. The case studies from the physical sciences indicate greater selection in keyword choice than in the social sciences. Similar evolutionary analyses can be applied to a wide range of phenomena; wherever the popularity of multiple items through time has been recorded, as with web searches, or sales of popular music and books, for example.

Citation

Bentley, R. (2008). Random drift versus selection in academic vocabulary: an evolutionary analysis of published keywords. PLoS ONE, 3(8), Article e3057. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003057

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Aug 27, 2008
Deposit Date	Jan 25, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Jan 27, 2012
Journal	PLoS ONE
Publisher	Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	3
Issue	8
Article Number	e3057
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003057

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2008 Bentley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.