How scientific literature has been evolving over the time? A novel statistical approach using tracking verbal-based methods

Abstract

This paper provides a global vision of the scientific publications related with the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), taking as starting point abstracts of articles. Through the time, abstracts have been evolving towards higher complexity on used terminology, which makes necessary the use of sophisticated statistical methods and answering questions including: how vocabulary is evolving through the time? Which ones are most influential articles? And which one are the articles that introduced new terms and vocabulary? To answer these, we analyze a dataset composed by 506 abstracts and downloaded from 115 different journals and cover a 18 year-period.