This study aims to reveal what kind of topics emerged in the biomedical domain by retrospectively analyzing newly added MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms from 2001 to 2010 and how they have been used for indexing since their inclusion in the thesaurus. The goal is to investigate if the future trend of a new topic depends on what kind of topic it is without relying on external indicators such as growth, citation patterns, or word co-occurrences. This topic perspective complements the traditional publication perspective in studying emerging topics. Results show that topic characteristics, including topic category, clinical significance, and if a topic has any narrower terms at the time of inclusion, influence future popularity of a new MeSH. Four emergence trend patterns are identified, including emerged and sustained, emerged not sustained, emerged and fluctuated, and not yet emerged. Predictive models using topic characteristics for emerging topic prediction show promise. This suggests that the characteristics of topics and domain should be considered when predicting future emergence of research topics. This study bridges a gap in emerging topic prediction by offering a topic perspective and advocates for considering topic and domain characteristics as well as economic, medical, and environmental impact when studying emerging topics in the biomedical domain.

中文翻译：

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生物医学领域出现的课题及其特点

本研究旨在通过回顾性分析 2001 年至 2010 年新添加的 MeSH（医学主题词）术语以及自它们被纳入同义词库以来如何用于索引，揭示生物医学领域出现了哪些主题。目标是调查一个新主题的未来趋势是否取决于它是什么主题，而不依赖于外部指标，例如增长、引用模式或单词共现。这种主题视角补充了研究新兴主题的传统出版视角。结果表明，主题特征（包括主题类别、临床意义以及主题在纳入时是否有任何更窄的术语）会影响新 MeSH 未来的流行度。确定了四种涌现趋势模式，包括涌现和持续、涌现不持续、出现和波动，尚未出现。使用主题特征进行新兴主题预测的预测模型显示出前景。这表明在预测未来研究主题的出现时应考虑主题和领域的特征。本研究通过提供主题视角来弥补新兴主题预测的差距，并提倡在研究生物医学领域的新兴主题时考虑主题和领域特征以及经济、医学和环境影响。