PLoS ONE (Jan 2021)

Word synonym relationships for text analysis: A graph-based approach.

  • Hend Alrasheed

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255127
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 7
p. e0255127

Abstract

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Keyword extraction refers to the process of detecting the most relevant terms and expressions in a given text in a timely manner. In the information explosion era, keyword extraction has attracted increasing attention. The importance of keyword extraction in text summarization, text comparisons, and document categorization has led to an emphasis on graph-based keyword extraction techniques because they can capture more structural information compared to other classic text analysis methods. In this paper, we propose a simple unsupervised text mining approach that aims to extract a set of keywords from a given text and analyze its topic diversity using graph analysis tools. Initially, the text is represented as a directed graph using synonym relationships. Then, community detection and other measures are used to identify keywords in the text. The set of extracted keywords is used to assess topic diversity within the text and analyze its sentiment. The proposed approach relies on grouping semantically similar candidate words. This approach ensures that the set of extracted keywords is comprehensive. Differing from other graph-based keyword extraction approaches, the proposed method does not require user parameters during graph construction and word scoring. The proposed approach achieved significant results compared to other keyword extraction techniques.