A Trend Analysis of the Question Answering Domain

Abstract

We present a trend analysis of the question answering (QA) domain. Using bibliometric mapping, we sketched the boundary of the domain by uncovering the topics central to and peripheral to QA research in the new millennium. This paper visualizes the evolution of concepts in the QA domain by studying the dynamics of the QA research during the periods 2000 – 2003 and 2004 – 2007. It was found that question classification, answer extraction, information retrieval, user interface, performance evaluation, web, & natural language were the main topics in current QA research.