Citation analysis using formal concept analysis: a case study in software engineering

In this paper Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is used as a means to analyse a field of research using published academic papers as its input. In particular, results are presented based on a case study of 47 academic papers in a scientific field of study. The analysis includes inferences about the field of study based on the domain background knowledge derived from the ISO12207 software engineering standard. Additionally, a number of alternative classifications based on the target application language and the reported application size are introduced. FCA reveals useful insights about the nature of the subject matter: identifying fruitful areas of research as well as producing details about characteristics of the community under examination.