Scientific Mapping and Analyzing Outputs of Meaning Theories in the Scopus Database

Abstract

Background and aim: Meaning theories have been used in many sciences, including philosophy, computer science, library and information sciences psychology and linguistics due to their specific nature and the way they look at the content and meaning of the message. The aim of this study was to review the published documents, draw and analyze the structure of the scientific map of the outputs of sense-making and semantic theories through lexical coherence analysis in the Scopus database. Materials and methods: This descriptive and applied study was conducted to investigate and evaluate the international scientific products related to sense-making and semantic theories based on a scientometric approach. The statistical population of this study was all articles published and related to this field. Findings: Based on the data obtained from the Scopus database, a scientific map of this field was drawn, and it was found that the scientific structure of meaning theories consisted of four main thematic clusters. Moreover, “meaning, management, interview and student” were the main words in this field. In this area, the publication of scientific outputs had a growing trend so that the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia had the most scientific output. The Universities of Sussex and Oxford in the United Kingdom had the highest output in this area. Conclusion: This study not only expressed the important lexical relationships of top individuals and organizations as well as the growth and type of outputs in this field but also indicated the most widely used and most referenced thematic areas of meaning theories. In addition, there was no correlation between different fields of science in the application of meaning theory and meaning in general, and gaps were observed in the scientific structure of this field.

Keywords

• meaning theories
• semantics
• scientometrics
• co-occurrence of words