Document proximity in academic repositories. Intellectual exploration of collections through lexical analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34096/ics.i54.17955Keywords:
Institutional repositories, Knowledge organization, Lexicometrics, Semantic navigation, Correspondence Factor AnalysisAbstract
A lexicometric analysis was conducted on 121 doctoral thesis abstracts in Psychology retrieved from repositories of Argentine public universities. The aim was to examine whether vocabulary distribution can relate documents without relying on thematic descriptors or citation links. The texts were organized into a term-document matrix. The association between documents and vocabulary was significant and of moderate-to-high magnitude (χ² = 530,239.11; df = 353,760; Cramér’s V = 0.435). Correspondence Analysis enabled the construction of a geometric space in which documents were located according to χ² distance. This made it possible to identify both close and distant works based on lexical distribution profiles. Nearby documents tended to share terminological repertoires associated with research problems, theoretical approaches or methodological procedures. These findings address an operational difficulty of academic repositories: how to classify, group and explore collections beyond individual record retrieval. The collection thus functions not only as an archive, but also as an internal network of relations that may support semantic navigation and the identification of prior work.
ARK CAICYT: https://id.caicyt.gov.ar/ark:/s18511740/2m0gf5j5t
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