Revival of Classical Algorithms: A Bibliometric Study on the Trends of Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms

The purpose of our bibliometric research was to capture and analyze the trends of two types of well-known classical artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms: neural networks (NNs) and genetic algorithms (GAs). Symmetry is a very popular international and interdisciplinary scientific journal that cover six major research subjects of mathematics, computer science, engineering science, physics, biology, and chemistry which are all related to our research on classical AI algorithms; therefore, we referred to the most innovative research articles of classical AI algorithms that have been published in Symmetry, which have also introduced new advanced applications for NNs and Gas. Furthermore, we used the keywords of “neural network algorithm” or “artificial neural network” to search the SSCI database from 2002 to 2021 and obtained 951 NN publications. For comparison purposes, we also analyzed GA trends by using the keywords “genetic algorithm” to search the SSCI database over the same period and we obtained 878 GA publications. All of the NN and GA publication results were categorized into eight groups for deep analyses so as to investigate their current trends and forecasts. Furthermore, we applied the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (K–S test) to check whether our bibliometric research complied with Lotka’s law. In summary, we found that the number of applications for both NNs and GAs are continuing to grow but the use of NNs is increasing more sharply than the use of GAs due to the boom in deep learning development. We hope that our research can serve as a roadmap for other NN and GA researchers to help them to save time and stay at the cutting edge of AI research trends