A Topic Modeling-Based Bibliometric Exploration of Indigenous Knowledge Research

Abstract

This study investigated the topics used by the Indian authors in the Indigenous knowledge research domain. A bibliometric approach is explored to identify the research done so far on the said topic by the Indian authors, collaboration pattern, and top contributing institutions. Topic modelling is used to identify the topics used by Indian authors. A relationship map is also drawn between the topics and the documents to understand the topic-wise nature of each document, and how the concepts are interrelated. A total of 821 articles contributed by Indian authors in Web of Science (WoS) indexed journals were selected for the study. The articles were analysed in terms of growth, citation rate, top-cited articles, contributing institutions, and inter-country collaboration with Indian authors. A topic modelling approach using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method was also used to determine the topics used by the Indian authors in the Indigenous knowledge research domain using KNIME software. Most of the topics used by the Indian authors are - plants, medicine, farming, fishing, biodiversity, species etc. A topic v/s document analysis is also done that shows the interrelationship between topic and documents. USA found to have the highest collaborative research with India in field of Indigenous knowledge research domain. The publication trend shows that many articles have been published after 2019. Implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 that encourages preservation of Indigenous knowledge might be one of the reasons that escalate the publication in this research domain.