iPod
iPhone
iPad

0.0060%

0.0050%

frequency

0.0040%

0.0030%

0.0020%

0.0010%

0.0000% 2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

should be conducted periodically to codify and chronicle a publication’s history, helping refine its identity over time. This is especially important with long-lived journals (such as Communications) that serve as standard-bearers for their respective disciplines. When applied to a broad portfolio of publications, such analyses would help readers, authors, advertisers, and editors alike better understand journals more objectively and perhaps even glimpse what the future holds for disciplines like computer science.

 

riod. 11 However, after the sudden enormous popularity of the iPhone in 2007 and 2008, interest in the iPod began to wane, as the ongoing incorporation of digital music capabilities into smartphones (such as the iPhone) made the iPod an increasingly redundant technology. Beginning around 2009 interest in the iPhone also began to decline among computing professionals, while at the same time interest in Apple’s most current innovation—iPad— continued to increase. Together, these results demonstrate the viability of using n-gram analyses to help study technological evolution over time.

Conclusion

Findings of a 2010 U.S. Department of Labor longitudinal study indicate col-lege-educated workers hold an average of 11 different jobs by the time they are 44. 16 This surprising statistic has important ramifications for all organizations, since it implies skilled workers (such as managers) will, on average, hold their positions of leadership and productivity for only a few years before moving on. Reflecting such short tenure, managers inevitably struggle to develop the sort of deep, tacit understanding of their organizations that is critical to strategic decision making. If such knowledge can be found within the archived document artifacts produced by an institution over time, then n-gram analyses like those we have presented here may prove invaluable for sifting through the content of these vast collections of archival documents, as well as contribute to improvements in managerial decision making.

With respect to our conclusions, we
found more recent issues of Communi-
cations contained substantially more
content than earlier issues. The nature
of this content is also changing, as ar-
ticles published in Communications
are trending away from managerial
and business subjects to focus instead
on more technical and computational
subjects. Despite this trend, the writing
style in Communications became less
formal and more personal over time,
helping it reach a wider audience.

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Daniel S. Soper ( [e-mail]) is an assistant professor in the information Systems and decision Sciences department of the Mihaylo college of business and economics at california State University, fullerton.

Ofir Turel ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the information Systems and decision Sciences department of the Mihaylo college of business and economics at california State University, fullerton.