The Landscape of Aging Research: Topic Discovery and Country-Level Contributions Through Text Mining

With the rise in aging populations worldwide, research focused on older adults has expanded significantly across multiple disciplines. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the global research landscape on aging, highlighting key contributing countries, major research themes, and emerging trends. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, a large corpus of research articles related to aging populations, published between 2000 and 2023 and retrieved from the Scopus database, was examined. The data were divided into four six-year periods to observe the progression and shifts in research focus over time. Fourteen broad research categories were identified, with early studies heavily centered on health and medical issues. However, in more recent periods, there has been a noticeable shift toward promoting the overall well-being of older adults. This includes growing attention to technological innovations, mental health, social support systems, and the development of age-friendly environments. Additionally, countries such as South Korea and China have demonstrated remarkable growth in both their aging populations and their research contributions - particularly in technology-related fields. These findings underscore the importance of a more integrated and forward-thinking policy approach - where health remains vital, but quality of life is gaining prominence in aging-related agendas.