The document summarizes a study that analyzed over 6,000 computer science and engineering theses in Turkey between 1983-2012. It found that the most popular topics included software, databases, artificial intelligence, computer networks, and internet-related subjects. The analysis also showed changes in popular topics over time, with more recent theses focusing on data mining, neural networks, wireless networks, image processing, and fuzzy logic. The theses came from top Turkish universities, with the highest numbers from Middle East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, and Istanbul Technical University.
The document summarizes a study that analyzed over 6,000 computer science and engineering theses in Turkey between 1983-2012. It found that the most popular topics included software, databases, artificial intelligence, computer networks, and internet-related subjects. The analysis also showed changes in popular topics over time, with more recent theses focusing on data mining, neural networks, wireless networks, image processing, and fuzzy logic. The theses came from top Turkish universities, with the highest numbers from Middle East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, and Istanbul Technical University.
The document summarizes a study that analyzed over 6,000 computer science and engineering theses in Turkey between 1983-2012. It found that the most popular topics included software, databases, artificial intelligence, computer networks, and internet-related subjects. The analysis also showed changes in popular topics over time, with more recent theses focusing on data mining, neural networks, wireless networks, image processing, and fuzzy logic. The theses came from top Turkish universities, with the highest numbers from Middle East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, and Istanbul Technical University.
Maltepe University Content Introduction Motivation Aim and Scope Data Acquisition Method Thesis Distribution by Years Number of Theses by University Change in the Themes of Theses Evaluation Conclusion and Future Work
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 2/24
Introduction Graduate theses have significant value in the development of a discipline. Analysis of theses conducted on a discipline can provide valuable information about coverage and depth of the field, present the general view of the field, revealing the trends and also the topics saturated over the years.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 3/24
Motivation There is no comprehensive and up-to-date study that examines and analyzes the theses conducted specifically on computer science and engineering in Turkey.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 4/24
Aim and Scope Our aim is to investigate the profile of the graduate theses conducted on computer science and engineering in Turkey, to understand the research interests and trends over the last three decades in this field from the theses. We examined 6,307 master’s and PhD theses 5,595 MSc & 712 PhD theses, submitted to the national thesis database of The Council of Higher Education (Yükseköğretim Kurulu – YÖK), between 1983 and 2012.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 5/24
Data Acquisition Method 1/5 YÖK thesis database is publicly available via the YÖK thesis web portal Unlimited search by several criteria, Unlimited abstract access (Turkish & English), Limited full text download.
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Data Acquisition Method 2/5
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Data Acquisition Method 3/5 We needed thesis abstracts for an extensive text mining study. There were over 300,000 theses in the database as of July 2012. We developed a web crawling and processing tool in C# programming language.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 8/24
Data Acquisition Method 4/5 Downloaded 308,870 HTML files for thesis registration data, 308,870 HTML files for thesis abstracts. Performed cleaning, parsing, and information extraction from these HTML files. Recorded the extracted data into a relational database (for further easy querying and processing).
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 9/24
Data Acquisition Method 5/5 We selected 6,307 theses for processing whose at least one subject topic field contains the text “Bilgisayar Mühendisliği Bilimleri” (computer engineering sciences). We made use of the index terms (keywords) of the theses.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 10/24
Thesis Distribution by Years
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 11/24
Thesis Distribution by Universities University MSc PhD Total % Middle East Technical University 910 141 1,051 16.7 Boğaziçi University 508 60 568 9.0 İstanbul Technical University 473 59 532 8.4 Ege University 322 78 400 6.3 İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University 328 33 361 5.7 Gazi University 266 30 296 4.7 Marmara University 230 36 266 4.2 Yıldız Technical University 157 31 188 3.0 Dokuz Eylül University 137 32 169 2.7 Selçuk University 120 22 142 2.3
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Change in the Themes of Theses We analyzed the themes of theses in 5 periods of about 5 years as 1983-1990, 1991-1995, 1996-2000, 2001-2005, 2006-2012. Most popular research topics of these periods are presented.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 13/24
1983-1990 Period Research Topic Count % Software 27 7.12 Computers 14 3.69 Database 8 2.11 Expert systems 7 1.85 Education 6 1.58 Computer aided design 5 1.32 Microcomputers 5 1.32 Artificial intelligence 4 1.06 Computer assisted education 4 1.06 Computer graphics 4 1.06 Computer networks 4 1.06 Information systems 4 1.06 System analysis 4 1.06 Computer assisted instruction 3 0.79 Computer software 3 0.79 October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 14/24 1991-1995 Period Research Topic Count % Database 30 2.26 Design 30 2.26 Database management system 24 1.81 Software 23 1.73 Artificial neural networks 20 1.50 Expert systems 20 1.50 Computer networks 18 1.35 Algorithms 15 1.13 Artificial intelligence 15 1.13 Programming languages 14 1.05 Computer aided control 13 0.98 Object oriented database 11 0.83 Operating systems 11 0.83 Computer assisted education 9 0.68 Data communication 9 0.68 October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 15/24 1996-2000 Period Research Topic Count % Database 49 2.07 Internet 47 1.99 Artificial neural networks 41 1.73 Computer networks 40 1.69 Fuzzy logic 29 1.23 Algorithms 25 1.06 Distributed systems 25 1.06 Software 24 1.01 Simulation 22 0.93 Information systems 21 0.89 Java 19 0.80 Computer assisted education 14 0.59 Object oriented database 13 0.55 Robots 13 0.55 Artificial intelligence 12 0.51 October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 16/24 2001-2005 Period Research Topic Count % Internet 51 2.31 Information systems 46 2.09 Simulation 30 1.36 Software 27 1.22 Database 25 1.13 Data mining 23 1.04 Computer networks 22 1.00 Artificial neural networks 21 0.95 Distance education 21 0.95 Electronic commerce 17 0.77 Distributed systems 15 0.68 Genetic algorithms 15 0.68 Java 13 0.59 Artificial intelligence 12 0.54 Natural language processing 11 0.50 October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 17/24 2006-2012 Period Research Topic Count % Data mining 103 2.04 Artificial neural networks 102 2.02 Wireless networks 78 1.54 Image processing 60 1.19 Artificial intelligence 57 1.13 Fuzzy logic 47 0.93 Genetic algorithms 38 0.75 Software engineering 37 0.73 Simulation 33 0.65 Computer networks 30 0.59 Ontology 29 0.57 Natural language processing 28 0.55 Software 26 0.51 Computer vision 25 0.49 Optimization 24 0.47 October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 18/24 Evaluation 1/4 Artificial neural networks have almost always been a hot research topic. Artificial intelligence has been gaining its old popularity again. Genetic algorithms is also highly popular in the last decade. Fuzzy logic was very popular during 1996-2000, losts interest during 2001-2005, gains its popularity again during 2006-2012.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 19/24
Evaluation 2/4 Database was one of the most popular subjects until the period of 2001-2005. There is a paradigm shift in the academia towards data mining and related techniques. Natural language processing has been gaining interest.
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Evaluation 3/4 Internet and related technologies and applications were highly popular through 1996-2005. Recent communication-related studies are mostly on wireless networks and communication systems.
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Evaluation 4/4 Software engineering has been drawing attention and it has been becoming a major research area. Java was highly popular in academic studies during the 1996-2000 period, but it is now a well-understood development tool rather than a special research concept.
October 24-25, 2013 / Kuşadası ISCSE 2013 22/24
Conclusion and Future Work We examined 6,307 master’s and PhD theses conducted on computer science and engineering between 1983 and 2012 in Turkey. We presented the profile analysis of the theses, and analyzed the popularity of research areas over the years. Our analysis of theme change is based on index terms supplied by thesis authors. As a future work, we plan to extend and improve our analysis with automatic keyword and index term extraction from the thesis abstracts using text mining and natural language processing techniques.