Citation analysis and bibliometric approach for ant colony optimization from 1996 to 2010

To build awareness of the development of ant colony optimization (ACO), this study clarifies the citation and bibliometric analysis of research publications of ACO during 1996–2010. This study analysed 12,960 citations from a total of 1372 articles dealing with ACO published in 517 journals based on the databases of SCIE, SSCI and AH&CI, retrieved via the Web of Science. Bradford Law and Lotka’s Law, respectively, examined the distribution of journal articles and author productivity. Furthermore, this study determines the citation impact of ACO using parameters such as extent of citation received in terms of number of citations per study, distribution of citations over time, distribution of citations among domains, citation of authors, citation of institutions, highly cited papers and citing journals and impact factor of 12,960 citations. This study can help researchers to better understand the history, current status and trends of ACO in the advanced study of it.