Topics and Trends in Metadata Research

Abstract

While the body of research on metadata has grown substantially, there has been a lack of systematic analysis of the field of metadata. In this study, we attempt to fill this gap by examining metadata literature spanning the past 20 years. With the combination of a text mining technique, topic modeling, and network analysis, we analyzed 2,713 scholarly papers on metadata published between 1995 and 2014 and identified main topics and trends in metadata research. As the result of topic modeling, 20 topics were discovered and, among those, the most prominent topics were reviewed in detail. In addition, the changes over time in the topic composition, in terms of both the relative topic proportions and the structure of topic networks, were traced to find past and emerging trends in research. The results show that a number of core themes in metadata research have been established over the past decades and the field has advanced, embracing and responding to the dynamic changes in information environments as well as new developments in the professional field.