This article asks how a century of scholarship in the journal Public Administration has evolved in topics, methods and geography, and offers a systematic, data-driven portrait of the field using bibliometrics and natural language processing. The authors map thematic change across five eras of the journal, identify 63 linguistic clusters of research, and characterize shifts in disciplinary influence, geographical settings and methodological orientations without making causal claims beyond the descriptive evidence.
Bibliometric analysis with NLP, 63 thematic clusters, five historical eras, British roots to internationalization
Data and methods
The study analyzes the publication history of the journal Public Administration using bibliometric methods enhanced by natural language processing. The main analysis extracts 63 thematic clusters based on linguistic similarities and tracks their evolution through five eras of scholarship. The abstract identifies the core tools (bibliometrics and NLP) and the unit of analysis (the journal's published articles) but does not provide detailed sampling or preprocessing steps in the abstract.
Main findings
The authors report changes over time in disciplinary influences, geographical settings and methodological orientations. They document 63 thematic clusters and trace how these clusters evolve across five historical eras. The abstract summarizes the journal’s trajectory as moving from "strong British roots" toward an "increasingly international, interdisciplinary, and dynamic community," and characterizes the field’s state as a "fragmented adhocracy."
- The analysis yields 63 topic clusters derived from linguistic similarity.
- The study distinguishes five eras to describe temporal changes in the journal's content and orientation.
- The abstract emphasizes a shift from British-centered scholarship to greater internationalization.
