Using AI to Analyze Humanities Research Trends in Chinese and Taiwan Studies

Abstract

The Humanities Academic Trends System (http://trends.ncl.edu.tw/) was created by Taiwan’s National Central Library (NCL) in 2019. It combines Artificial Intelligence, text mining and meta-analysis techniques to work over the web pages and social media of Chinese Studies institutions worldwide. The system surveys research in the fields of Taiwan Studies and Chinese Studies, analyzes popular academic trends, and exploring the spatio-temporal distribution of prevalent academic concepts.

The system homepage features interactive analytical charts and uses Responsive Web Design to arrange content to fit different screen sizes. The system uses Chinese and English text mining to automatically analyze web pages, producing keywords, top 50 vocabularies, hot topic analysis, post volume, positive/negative emotion ratio, spatial distribution analysis, and popular article ranking charts. Clicking on these interactive charts opens relevant data lists and displays links to the original articles. The system can also perform an analysis in depth based on user-defined keywords.

In future, the system will gradually increase the number of websites surveyed. The aim is that Chinese Studies and Taiwan Studies scholars worldwide can use this system to examine academic trends in literature, history, and philosophy, to accumulate research experience, and to discover new research directions.