<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><sec><h3>Purpose</h3><p>Changes in the world show that the role, importance, and coherence of SSH (social sciences and the humanities) will increase significantly in the coming years. This paper aims to monitor and analyze the evolution (or overlapping) of the SSH thematic pattern through three funding instruments since 2007.</p></sec><sec><h3>Design/methodology/approach</h3><p>The goal of the paper is to check to what extent the EU Framework Program (FP) affects/does not affect research on national level, and to highlight hot topics from a given period with the help of text analysis. Funded project titles and abstracts derived from the EU FP, Slovenian, and Estonian RIS were used. The final analysis and comparisons between different datasets were made based on the 200 most frequent words. After removing punctuation marks, numeric values, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs, 4,854 unique words in ETIS, 4,421 unique words in the Slovenian Research Information System (SICRIS), and 3,950 unique words in FP were identified.</p></sec><sec><h3>Findings</h3><p>Across all funding instruments, about a quarter of the top words constitute half of the word occurrences. The text analysis results show that in the majority of cases words do not overlap between FP and nationally funded projects. In some cases, it may be due to using different vocabulary. There is more overlapping between words in the case of Slovenia (SL) and Estonia (EE) and less in the case of Estonia and EU Framework Programmes (FP). At the same time, overlapping words indicate a wider reach (culture, education, social, history, human, innovation, etc.). In nationally funded projects (bottom-up), it was relatively difficult to observe the change in thematic trends over time. More specific results emerged from the comparison of the different programs throughout FP (top-down).</p></sec><sec><h3>Research limitations</h3><p>Only projects with English titles and abstracts were analyzed.</p></sec><sec><h3>Practical implications</h3><p>The specifics of SSH have to take into account—the one-to-one meaning of terms/words is not as important as, for example, in the exact sciences. Thus, even in co-word analysis, the final content may go unnoticed.</p></sec><sec><h3>Originality/value</h3><p>This was the first attempt to monitor the trends of SSH projects using text analysis. The text analysis of the SSH projects of the two new EU Member States used in the study showed that SSH's thematic coverage is not much affected by the EU Framework Program. Whether this result is field-specific or country-specific should be shown in the following study, which targets SSH projects in the so-called old Member States.</p></sec></abstract>

PurposeChanges in the world show that the role, importance, and coherence of SSH (social sciences and the humanities) will increase significantly in the coming years. This paper aims to monitor and analyze the evolution (or overlapping) of the SSH thematic pattern through three funding instruments since 2007.Design/methodology/approachThe goal of the paper is to check to what extent the EU Framework Program (FP) affects/does not affect research on national level, and to highlight hot topics from a given period with the help of text analysis. Funded project titles and abstracts derived from the EU FP, Slovenian, and Estonian RIS were used. The final analysis and comparisons between different datasets were made based on the 200 most frequent words. After removing punctuation marks, numeric values, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs, 4,854 unique words in ETIS, 4,421 unique words in the Slovenian Research Information System (SICRIS), and 3,950 unique words in FP were identified.FindingsAcross all funding instruments, about a quarter of the top words constitute half of the word occurrences. The text analysis results show that in the majority of cases words do not overlap between FP and nationally funded projects. In some cases, it may be due to using different vocabulary. There is more overlapping between words in the case of Slovenia (SL) and Estonia (EE) and less in the case of Estonia and EU Framework Programmes (FP). At the same time, overlapping words indicate a wider reach (culture, education, social, history, human, innovation, etc.). In nationally funded projects (bottom-up), it was relatively difficult to observe the change in thematic trends over time. More specific results emerged from the comparison of the different programs throughout FP (top-down).Research limitationsOnly projects with English titles and abstracts were analyzed.Practical implicationsThe specifics of SSH have to take into account—the one-to-one meaning of terms/words is not as important as, for example, in the exact sciences. Thus, even in co-word analysis, the final content may go unnoticed.Originality/valueThis was the first attempt to monitor the trends of SSH projects using text analysis. The text analysis of the SSH projects of the two new EU Member States used in the study showed that SSH's thematic coverage is not much affected by the EU Framework Program. Whether this result is field-specific or country-specific should be shown in the following study, which targets SSH projects in the so-called old Member States.

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis<xref ref-type="fn" rid="j_jdis-2020-0036_fn_001_w2aab3b7c63b1b6b1ab2aaAb1"><sup>①</sup></xref>

Journal of Data and Information Science

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis

PurposeChanges in the world show that the role, importance, and coherence of SSH (social sciences and the humanities) will increase significantly in the coming...

Source	No. of Projects
FP 7 Cooperation. Theme 8: Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities.	255
HORIZON 2020 Societal Challenge 6. Europe in a changing world—inclusive, innovative and reflective societies (as of March 2018)	277
The Slovenian Research Information System (SICRIS)	663
The Estonian Research Information System (ETIS)	489

Database	Total no. of words	No. of words after cleaning	Proportion of Top 200 words from cleaned words (%)
ETIS	9,132	4,854	46
SICRIS	12,813	4,421	45
CORDIS	28,819	3,950	44

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis^①

Article Category: Research Paper

Publié en ligne: 21 sept. 2020

Pages: 116 - 125

Reçu: 20 janv. 2020

Accepté: 31 juil. 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2020-0036

Mots clés
Text analysis, SSH, Estonian Research Information System (ETIS), Slovenian Research Information System (SICRIS), Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS)

© 2020 Ülle Must, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

SSH funded projects in 2007–2018.

The number of words in ETIS, SICRIS, and CORDIS projects titles and abstracts.

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis①

Article Category: Research Paper

Publié en ligne: 21 sept. 2020

Pages: 116 - 125

Reçu: 20 janv. 2020

Accepté: 31 juil. 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2020-0036

Mots clésText analysis, SSH, Estonian Research Information System (ETIS), Slovenian Research Information System (SICRIS), Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS)

© 2020 Ülle Must, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

SSH funded projects in 2007–2018.

The number of words in ETIS, SICRIS, and CORDIS projects titles and abstracts.

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis^①

Mots clés
Text analysis, SSH, Estonian Research Information System (ETIS), Slovenian Research Information System (SICRIS), Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS)