The Artificial Immune Systems Domain: Identifying Progress and Main Contributors Using Publication and Co-Authorship Analyses

Much can be learned about the progress, fathers and fu- ture of a scientific domain from the analysis of a collection of relevant articles and their corresponding authors. Here, we study the highly in- terdisciplinary domain of Artificial Immune System (AIS) since its birth, a couple of decades ago. We apply Social Network Analysis to the co- authorship network of the most comprehensive publicly accessible AIS bibliography. We automatically extract publication dates and author names from the bibliography and evaluate authors with the highest de- gree (unique collaborations) and centrality (influence). Our results highlight the relative growth of publication volume and iden- tify significant contributors in the AIS field. Furthermore, our findings are not only encouraging for the AIS community but may be useful for analyses of other scientific communities and leading contributors therein.