Researching Digital Society: Using Data-Mining to Identify Relevant Themes from an Open Access Journal

Overview & Synopsis

Open Access scholarly literature is scientific output free from economic barriers and copyright restrictions. Using a case study approach, data mining methods and qualitative analysis, the scholarly output and the meta-data of the Open Access eJournal of e-Democracy and Open Government during the time interval 2009–2020 was analysed. Our study was able to identify the most prominent research topics (defined as thematic clusters) of the journal, their evolution over time and how these were influenced by journal management factors. This kind of analysis helps editors to develop an editorial strategy, decide on the thematic development of the journal and address the expectations of future authors of the journal. It further can provide insights about research themes and trends within a scholarly community and their development over time.