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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the research fronts by analysing highly cited core papers adjusted with the age of a paper in library and information science (LIS) where natural language processing (NLP) is being applied significantly. Design/methodology/approach: By excavating international databases, 3,087 core papers that received at least 5% of the total citations have been identified. By calculating the average mean years of these core papers, and total citations received, a CPT (citation/publication/time) value was calculated in all 20 fronts to understand how a front is relatively receiving greater attention among peers within a course of time. One theme article has been finally identified from each of these 20 fronts. Findings: Bidirectional encoder representations from transformers with CPT value 1.608 followed by sentiment analysis with CPT 1.292 received highest attention in NLP research. Columbia University New York, in terms of University, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, in terms of journals, USA followed by People Republic of China, in terms of country and Xu, H., University of Texas, in terms of author are the top in these fronts. It is identified that the NLP applications boost the performance of digital libraries and automated library systems in the digital environment. Practical implications: Any research fronts that are identified in the findings of this paper may be used as a base for researchers who intended to perform extensive research on NLP. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, the methodology adopted in this paper is the first of its kind where meta-analysis approach has been used for understanding the research fronts in sub field like NLP for a broad domain like LIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]