Unveiling the Landscape of Requirements Engineering: Insights from Text Mining

Abstract

This study applies text mining to analyze the Requirements Engineering (RE) literature over a 21-year period aiming to understand its evolution, current state, and future trajectory. Our analysis of publication volume, citation data, and funding trends reveals a significant evolution in research focus. We identify a clear transition away from foundational topics like model specification and project management towards a greater emphasis on user-centric and quality-focused themes. Specifically, topics such as elicitation technique, evaluation/validation/testing, and user perspective/aspect have demonstrated a dramatic surge in academic interest, citations, and research funding in the last decade. These findings provide a data-driven roadmap of the RE domain, offering valuable guidance for stakeholders to align with current trends and for researchers to identify impactful future directions in software engineering. © 2026 IEEE.