Investigating methods and applications of citation context analysis

Traditionally, scientometric/text-mining approaches have treated the content of scientific articles and their citations as distinct units of analysis. The term “citation context” refers to an approach where citations to are not simply counted but where the texts around them are taken into account in order to understand and exploit the motivations and knowledge underpinning citing behaviour. Previous work, for instance, has used citation contexts to enrich term vectors for article clustering (Aljibar et al., 2010). Other work has measured the proximity and order of appearance of citations within documents as a means of recommending related work (e.g. Gipp & Beel, 2009) and enriching co-citation analysis in other applications (Callahan et al., 2010). As scientific article and citation data become more open, there are many opportunities to investigate problems and applications in this under-researched area. We invite applications from candidates with an interest in citation context analysis or closely related areas.

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Contact the supervisor by email or phone to discuss your interest and find out if you would be suitable. Supervisor details can be found on this topic page. The supervisor will guide you in developing the topic-specific research proposal, which will form part of your application.
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This is a self funded topic

Brunel offers a number of funding options to research students that help cover the cost of their tuition fees, contribute to living expenses or both. See more information here: https://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/Research-degrees/Research-degree-funding. The UK Government is also offering Doctoral Student Loans for eligible students, and there is some funding available through the Research Councils. Many of our international students benefit from funding provided by their governments or employers. Brunel alumni enjoy tuition fee discounts of 15%.