Twenty years of Soft Computing: a bibliometric overview

Foundations
First Online:
  • 42 Downloads

Abstract

The journal Soft Computing was launched in 1997, and it is dedicated to promote advancements in soft computing theories, which includes fuzzy sets theory, neural networks, evolutionary computation, probabilistic reasoning and hybrid theories. 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the journal. Motivated by this anniversary, this study presents a bibliometric analysis of the current publications in the journal in order to identify the leading trends ruling the journal. The paper also develops a mapping analysis of the bibliographic material by using the visualization of similarities viewer software. The results show that researchers from all over the world publish regularly in the journal. Soft Computing is growing significantly during the last years, becoming one of the leading journals in the field.

Keywords

Bibliometrics Web of Science h-Index VOS viewer 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access

Notes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Vincenzo Loia and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments that have improved the quality of the paper. Support from the Chilean Government through the Fondecyt Regular program (Project Number 1160286) and the FEDER funds under grant TIN2016-75850-R are gratefully acknowledged.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they do not have any conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

References

  1. Alcalá-Fernández J, Sánchez L, García S, del Jesús MJ, Ventura S, Garrell JM, Otero J, Romero C, Bacardit J, Rivas VM, Fernández JC, Herrera F (2009) KEEL: a software tool to assess evolutionary algorithms for data mining problems. Soft Comput 13:307–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Alonso S, Cabrerizo FJ, Herrera-Viedma E, Herrera F (2009) H-index: a review focused on its variants, computation, and standarization for different scientific fields. J. Informetr. 3:273–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Amiguet L, Gil-Lafuente AM, Kydland FE, Merigó JM (2017) One hundred and twenty-five years of the Journal of Political Economy: a bibliometric overview. J Political Econ 125(6) http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/jpe/125-5
  4. Biemans W, Griffin A, Moenaert R (2007) Twenty years of the Journal of Product Innovation Management: history, participants and knowledge stocks and flows. J Prod Innov Manag 24:193–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Blanco-Mesa F, Merigó JM, Gil-Lafuente AM (2017) Fuzzy decision making: a bibliometric-based review. J Intell Fuzzy Syst 32:2033–2050CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Bonilla C, Merigó JM, Torres-Abad C (2015) Economics in Latin America: a bibliometric analysis. Scientometrics 105:1239–1252CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Broadus RN (1987) Toward a definition of “bibliometrics”. Scientometrics 12:373–379CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Cancino C, Merigó JM, Coronado F (2017a) A bibliometric analysis of leading universities in innovation research. J Innov Knowl 2:106–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Cancino C, Merigó JM, Coronado F, Dessouky Y, Dessouky M (2017b) Forty years of computers & industrial engineering: a bibliometric analysis. Comput Ind Eng 113:614–629CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Capuano N, Chiclana F, Fujita H, Herrera-Viedma E, Loia V (2018) Fuzzy group decision making with incomplete information guided by social influence. IEEE Trans Fuzzy Syst.  https://doi.org/10.1109/TFUZZ.2017.2744605 Google Scholar
  11. Cobo MJ, López-Herrera AG, Herrera-Viedma E, Herrera F (2011a) An approach for detecting, quantifying and visualizing the evolution of a research field: a practical application to the fuzzy sets theory field. J Informetr 5:146–166CrossRefMATHGoogle Scholar
  12. Cobo MJ, Lopez-Herrera AG, Herrera-Viedma E, Herrera F (2011b) Science mapping software tools: review, analysis and cooperative study among tools. J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 62:1382–1402CrossRefMATHGoogle Scholar
  13. Cobo MJ, Lopez-Herrera AG, Herrera-Viedma E, Herrera F (2012) SciMAT: a new science mapping analysis software tool. J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 63:1609–1630CrossRefMATHGoogle Scholar
  14. Cobo MJ, Martínez MA, Gutiérrez-Salcedo M, Fujita H, Herrera-Viedma E (2015) 25 years at knowledge-based systems: a bibliometric analysis. Knowl-Based Syst 80:3–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Coupé T (2003) Revealed performances: worldwide rankings of economists and economics departments, 1990–2000. J Eur Econ Assoc 1:1309–1345CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. del Moral MJ, Chiclana F, Tapia JM, Herrera-Viedma E (2018) A comparative study on consensus measures in group decision making. Int J Intell Syst.  https://doi.org/10.1002/int.21954 Google Scholar
  17. Dhall R, Solanki VK (2017) An IoT based predictive connected car maintenance approach. Int J Interact Multimed Artif Intell 4:16–22Google Scholar
  18. Emrouznejad A, Marra M (2014) Ordered weighted averaging operators 1988–2014. A citation based literature survey. Int J Intell Syst 29:994–1014CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. García-Merino MT, Pereira-do-Carmo ML, Santos-Álvarez MV (2006) 25 years of technovation: characterisation and evolution of the journal. Technovation 26:1303–1316CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Gutierrez-Salcedo M, Martinez MA, Moral-Muñoz JA, Herrera-Viedma E, Cobo MJ (2018) Some bibliometric procedures for analyzing and evaluating research fields. Appl Intell.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-017-1105-y Google Scholar
  21. He XR, Wu YY, Yu D, Merigó JM (2017) Exploring the ordered weighted averaging operator knowledge domain: a bibliometric analysis. Int J Intell Syst 32:1151–1166CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Heradio R, Pérez-Morago H, Fernández-Amorós D, Cabrerizo FJ, Herrera-Viedma E (2016) A bibliometric analysis of 20 years of research on software product lines. Inf Softw Technol 72:1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Hirsch JE (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:16569–16572CrossRefMATHGoogle Scholar
  24. Kessler MM (1963) Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers. Am Doc 14:10–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Laengle S, Merigó JM, Miranda J, Slowinski R, Bomze I, Borgonovo E, Dyson RG, Oliveira JF, Teunter R (2017) Forty years of the European Journal of Operational Research: a bibliometric overview. Eur J Oper Res 262:803–816CrossRefMATHGoogle Scholar
  26. Liao HC, Xu ZS, Zeng XJ, Merigó JM (2015) Qualitative decision making with correlation coefficients of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets. Knowl-Based Syst 76:127–138CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Liao HC, Tang M, Luo L, Li C, Chiclana F, Zeng XJ (2018a) A bibliometric analysis and visualization of medical big data research. Sustainability 10:1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Liao HC, Xu ZS, Herrera-Viedma E, Herrera F (2018b) Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set and its application in decision making: a state-of-the art survey. Int J Fuzzy Syst.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s40815-017-0432-9
  29. Linton JD (2004) Perspective: ranking business schools on the management of technology. J Prod Innov Manag 21:416–430CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Liu W, Liao HC (2017) A bibliometric analysis of fuzzy decision research during 1970–2015. Int J Fuzzy Syst 19:1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Martinez MA, Herrera M, Lopez-Gijon J, Herrera-Viedma E (2014) H-classics: characterizing the concept of citation classics through H-index. Scientometrics 98:1971–1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Martínez-López FJ, Merigó JM, Valenzuela L, Nicolás C (2018) Fifty years of the European Journal of Marketing: a bibliometric analysis. Eur J Mark 52:439–468CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Merigó JM, Yang JB (2017) A bibliometric overview of operations research & management science. Omega—International Journal of Management Science 73:37–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Merigó JM, Gil-Lafuente AM, Yager RR (2015a) An overview of fuzzy research with bibliometric indicators. Appl Soft Comput 27:420–433CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Merigó JM, Mas-Tur A, Roig-Tierno N, Ribeiro-Soriano D (2015b) A bibliometric overview of the Journal of Business Research between 1973 and 2014. J Bus Res 68:2645–2653CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Merigó JM, Cancino C, Coronado F, Urbano D (2016) Academic research in innovation: a country analysis. Scientometrics 108:559–593CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Merigó JM, Blanco-Mesa F, Gil-Lafuente AM, Yager RR (2017) Thirty years of the International Journal of Intelligent Systems: a bibliometric review. Int J Intell Syst 32:526–554CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Merigó JM, Pedrycz W, Weber R, de la Sotta C (2018) Fifty years of Information Sciences: a bibliometric overview. Inf Sci 432:245–268MathSciNetCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Moral-Muñoz JA, Cobo MJ, Chiclana F, Collop A, Herrera-Viedma E (2016) Analyzing highly cited papers in intelligent transportation systems. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 17:993–1001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Podsakoff PM, MacKenzie SB, Podsakoff NP, Bachrach DG (2008) Scholarly influence in the field of management: a bibliometric analysis of the determinants of university and author impact in the management literature in the past quarter century. J Manag 34:641–720Google Scholar
  41. Pritchard A (1969) Statistical bibliography or bibliometrics? J Doc 25:348–349Google Scholar
  42. Ramos-Rodríguez AR, Ruiz-Navarro J (2004) Changes in the intellectual structure of strategic management research: a bibliometric study of the Strategic Management Journal, 1980–2000. Strateg Manag J 25:981–1004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Schwert GW (1993) The Journal of Financial Economics: a retrospective evaluation (1974–91). J Financ Econ 33:369–424CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Settouti N, Bechar MEA, Chikh MA (2016) Statistical comparisons of the top 10 algorithms in data mining for classification task. Int J Interact Multimed Artif Intell 4:46–51Google Scholar
  45. Small H (1973) Co-citation in the scientific literature: a new measure of the relationship between two documents. J Am Soc Inf Sci 24:265–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Taibi A, Atmani B (2017) Combining fuzzy AHP with GIS and decision rules for industrial site selection. Int J Interact Multimed Artif Intell 4:60–69Google Scholar
  47. Tang M, Liao HC, Su SF (2018) A bibliometric overview and visualization of the International Journal of Fuzzy Systems between 2007 and 2017. Int J Fuzzy Syst (forthcoming)Google Scholar
  48. Thongpapanl N (2012) The changing landscape of technology and innovation management: an updated ranking of journals in the field. Technovation 32:257–271CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. Valenzuela L, Merigó JM, Nicolás C, Jaramillo F, Johnston W (2017) Thirty years of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing: a bibliometric analysis. J Bus Ind Mark 32:1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  50. Van Eck NJ, Waltman L (2007) Bibliometric mapping of the computational intelligence field. Int J Uncertain Fuzziness Knowl-Based Syst 15:625–645CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  51. Van Eck NJ, Waltman L (2010) Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics 84:523–538CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  52. Wang W, Laengle S, Merigó JM, Yu D, Herrera-Viedma E, Cobo MJ, Bouchon-Meunier B (2018) A bibliometric analysis of the first twenty-five years of the International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems. Int J Uncertain Fuzziness Knowl-Based Syst 26:169–193Google Scholar
  53. Weiss MA, Qiu J (2008) “The Journal of Risk and Insurance”: a 75-year historical perspective. J Risk Insur 75:253–274CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. Xu ZS, Liao HC (2015) A survey of approaches to decision making with intuitionistic fuzzy preference relations. Knowl-Based Syst 80:131–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  55. Yu D (2015) A scientometrics review on aggregation operator research. Scientometrics 105:115–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  56. Yu D, Liao HC (2016) Visualization and quantitative research on intuitionistic fuzzy studies. J Intell Fuzzy Syst 30:3653–3663CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Yu D, Shi S (2015) Researching the development of Atanassov intuitionistic fuzzy set: using a citation network analysis. Appl Soft Comput 32:189–198CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Yu D, Li DF, Merigó JM, Fang L (2016) Mapping development of linguistic decision making studies. J Intell Fuzzy Syst 30:2727–2736CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  59. Yu D, Xu ZS, Pedrycz W, Wang WR (2017) Information Sciences 1968–2016: a retrospective analysis with text mining and bibliometric. Inf Sci 418–419:619–634CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  60. Zhang HJ, Dong Y, Herrera-Viedma E (2018) Consensus building for the heterogeneous large-scale GDM with the individual concerns and satisfactions. IEEE Trans Fuzzy Syst.  https://doi.org/10.1109/TFUZZ.2017.2697403 Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Management Control and Information Systems, School of Economics and BusinessUniversity of ChileSantiagoChile
  2. 2.Department of Computer Science and EngineeringUniversity of CadizCádizSpain
  3. 3.Department of Computer Science and Artificial IntelligenceUniversity of GranadaGranadaSpain

Personalised recommendations