Exploring the ordered weighted averaging operator knowledge domain: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator has been received increasingly widespread interest since its appearance in 1988. Recently, a topic search with the keywords ordered weighted averaging operator or OWA operator on Web of Science (WOS) found 1231 documents. As the publications about OWA operator increase rapidly, thus a scientometric analysis of this research field and discovery of its knowledge domain becomes very important and necessary. This paper studies the publications about OWA operator between 1988 and 2015, and it is based on 1213 bibliographic records obtained by using topic search from WOS. The disciplinary distribution, most cited papers, influential journals, as well as influential authors are analyzed through citation and cocitation analysis. The emerging trends in OWA operator research are explored by keywords and references burst detection analysis. The research methods and results in this paper are meaningful for researchers associated with OWA operator field to understand the knowledge domain and establish their own future research direction.