What's hot and what's not – Identifying publication trends in insect ecology
- Authors: Andrew, Nigel , Evans, Maldwyn , Svejcar, Lauren , Prendegast, Kit , Barton, Philip
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Austral Ecology Vol. 47, no. 1 (2022), p. 5-16
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- Description: Research disciplines in science have historically developed in silos but are increasingly multidisciplinary. Here, we assessed how the insect ecology literature published in ecological and entomological journals has developed over the last 20 years and which topics have crossed discipline boundaries. We used structural topic modelling to assess research trends from 34 304 articles published in six ecology journals and six entomology journals between 2000 and 2020. We then identified and compared topics that emerged from the entire body of literature, or corpus, with topics that emerged from a subsection of articles that focused only on insects (insect corpus). We found that, within the entire corpus, topics on ‘Community ecology’, ‘Traits, life history & physiology’ and ‘Ecological methods & theory’ became more prevalent over time (hot topics), whereas ‘Population modelling’, ‘Insect development’, ‘Reproduction & ontogeny’ and ‘Plant growth’ declined in prevalence over the 20 years we surveyed (cold topics). In the insect corpus, we found that hot topics included ‘Thermal tolerance’ and ‘Disease vectors’, whereas cold topics included ‘Herbivore phenology’, ‘Insect-plant interactions’ and ‘Parasitoids and parasites’. ‘Landscape ecology’ was a growth topic area for both corpora. Our findings suggest that insect-related research is a major component of the broader ecological discipline, and there are topics in ecology where insect research aligns with general ecological trends. However, specific topics unique to the insect corpora – such as insect taxonomy – are fundamental to both insect and ecology research. © 2021 Ecological Society of Australia
Quantifying shifts in topic popularity over 44 years of austral ecology
- Authors: Westgate, Martin , Barton, Philip , Lindenmayer, David , Andrew, Nigel
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Austral Ecology Vol. 45, no. 6 (2020), p. 663-671
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- Description: The Ecological Society of Australia was founded in 1959, and the society’s journal was first published in 1976. To examine how research published in the society’s journal has changed over this time, we used text mining to quantify themes and trends in the body of work published by the Australian Journal of Ecology and Austral Ecology from 1976 to 2019. We used topic models to identify 30 ‘topics’ within 2778 full-text articles in 246 issues of the journal, followed by mixed modelling to identify topics with above-average or below-average popularity in terms of the number of publications or citations that they contain. We found high inter-decadal turnover in research topics, with an early emphasis on highly specific ecosystems or processes giving way to a modern emphasis on community, spatial and fire ecology, invasive species and statistical modelling. Despite an early focus on Australian research, papers discussing South American ecosystems are now among the fastest-growing and most frequently cited topics in the journal. Topics that were growing fastest in publication rates were not always the same as those with high citation rates. Our results provide a systematic breakdown of the topics that Austral Ecology authors and editors have chosen to research, publish and cite through time, providing a valuable window into the historical and emerging foci of the journal. © 2020 Ecological Society of Australia