A History of Cluster Analysis Using the Classification Society's Bibliography Over Four Decades

TL;DR

This paper analyzes four decades of bibliographic data on cluster analysis, highlighting significant growth and disciplinary shifts from 1994 to 2011, especially after 2000.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive historical overview of cluster analysis research trends and disciplinary changes over nearly four decades.

Findings

Enormous increase in scholarly publications post-2000

Shift in disciplinary focus from mathematics and psychology to management and engineering

Major growth in interdisciplinary research from 2004 onwards

Abstract

The Classification Literature Automated Search Service, an annual bibliography based on citation of one or more of a set of around 80 book or journal publications, ran from 1972 to 2012. We analyze here the years 1994 to 2011. The Classification Society's Service, as it was termed, has been produced by the Classification Society. In earlier decades it was distributed as a diskette or CD with the Journal of Classification. Among our findings are the following: an enormous increase in scholarly production post approximately 2000; a very major increase in quantity, coupled with work in different disciplines, from approximately 2004; and a major shift also from cluster analysis in earlier times having mathematics and psychology as disciplines of the journals published in, and affiliations of authors, contrasted with, in more recent times, a "centre of gravity" in management and engineering.