What is a Topic?

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A Topic is a collection of documents with a common focused intellectual interest and can be large or small, new or old, growing or declining. Over time, new Topics will surface, and as Topics are dynamic they will evolve.

As with the nature of today’s research landscape many Topics are multidisciplinary, and old Topics may be dormant, but they still exist. In addition, researchers themselves are mobile, and work in various different research areas, and thereby contribute to multiple Topics.

Scopus publications are clustered into Topics based upon a direct citation analysis. Where there is a weak citation link, there is a break and a new Topic is formed.