Evolution and recombination of topics in Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Technological Forecasting and Social Change (TFSC) is one of the main outlets in the literature on technological change. To assist its editors and future contributors in understanding the evolution of the journal, we review studies published between 1970 and 2022 identifying 25 main themes ranging f...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Savin, Ivan|||0000-0002-9469-0510
Format: article
Publication Date:2023
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repository:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:281352
Online Access:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/281352
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122723
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Computational linguistics
Knowledge recombination
Literature review
Machine learning
Topic modelling
Description
Summary:Technological Forecasting and Social Change (TFSC) is one of the main outlets in the literature on technological change. To assist its editors and future contributors in understanding the evolution of the journal, we review studies published between 1970 and 2022 identifying 25 main themes ranging from scenario foresight and forecasting methods that dominated the journal agenda in the first decades through innovation diffusion and patent analysis that gained popularity in 2006-2019 to social interaction and financial markets which experienced momentum in the last couple of years. We find that studies concentrated on more recent topics like firm performance, financial markets and environmental regulation have been cited more frequently and were contributed more often by scientists from China compared to the US. Inspired by the fact that studies recombining two or more topics are more impactful in terms of citations, we construct a graph of topics, both for the overall sample of 6240 studies reviewed and three periods of TFSC existence corresponding to different editors-in-chief. Our results illustrate knowledge complementarities explored in the journal so far and may indicate directions for further research.