Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39845717›Full record

ArticleRoyal Society open science2025

Human-interpretable clustering of short text using large language models.

Justin K Miller, Tristram J Alexander

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Royal Society open science, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Reconceptualizing Scoring Reliability Through Linguistic Similarity.Educational and psychological measurement · 2025
    Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Justin K MillerSchool of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2926-9196
Tristram J AlexanderSchool of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Clustering short text is a difficult problem, owing to the low word co-occurrence between short text documents. This work shows that large language models (LLMs) can overcome the limitations of traditional clustering approaches by generating embeddings that capture the semantic nuances of short text. In this study, clusters are found in the embedding space using Gaussian mixture modelling. The resulting clusters are found to be more distinctive and more human-interpretable than clusters produced using the popular methods of doc2vec and latent Dirichlet allocation. The success of the clustering approach is quantified using human reviewers and through the use of a generative LLM. The generative LLM shows good agreement with the human reviewers and is suggested as a means to bridge the 'validation gap' which often exists between cluster production and cluster interpretation. The comparison between LLM coding and human coding reveals intrinsic biases in each, challenging the conventional reliance on human coding as the definitive standard for cluster validation.

Indexed as

clustering validationlarge language modelstext clustering

Identifiers

PMID39845717
PMCPMC11750404

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.