A History of Cluster Analysis Using the Classification Society's Bibliography Over Four Decades
This study provides a historical overview of cluster analysis trends, which is useful for researchers tracking the field's evolution, but it is incremental as it extends prior bibliographic analyses.
The paper analyzed the Classification Literature Automated Search Service bibliography from 1994 to 2011, finding a large increase in scholarly output after 2000, a shift in disciplines from mathematics and psychology to management and engineering, and a rise in interdisciplinary work from around 2004.
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.