Measuring scientific buzz

Keywords are important for information retrieval. They are used to classify and sort papers. However, these terms can also be used to study trends within and across fields. In this poster, we describe preliminary analysis where we measure the burstiness of keywords within the field of AI. We examine 150k keywords in approximately 100k journal and conference papers. We find that nearly 80% of the keywords die off before year one for both journals and conferences but that terms last longer in journals versus conferences. We also find time periods of burstiness in AI - one where the terms are more neuroscience inspired and one more oriented to computational optimization. Our goal is to extend this analysis to other fields in order to better understand the dynamics of buzz within science