A Comprehensive Survey on Affinity Analysis, Bibliomining, and Technology Mining: Past, Present, and Future Research

Abstract

Recent advancements in high-speed communications and high-capacity computing systems have contributed to major growth in the data volume of databases. Data mining is a crucial part of information retrieval; it is often termed as database knowledge discovery. It consists of techniques for examining massive data sets, to find hidden (but possibly important) information. Three interesting fields in data mining are affinity analysis, bibliomining, and technology mining. Affinity analysis provides data mining techniques to determine the similarity among objects; bibliomining is a combination of data mining, bibliometrics, and data warehousing; technology mining is a research topic that is an obstacle to many scientists in the fields of time association, enterprise association, and computer programming. We present a systematic review of the notable research articles in the fields of affinity analysis, bibliomining, and technology mining published between 2000 and December 2021. We provide a systematic analysis of the selected literature by specifying the major contributions, used data sets, performance evaluations, and limitations. Our findings demonstrate that affinity analysis interoperability extends well beyond market basket analysis. We also demonstrate that, in the age of big data, the personalized needs of users are the driving forces behind the evolution of the digital library from a resource-sharing service to a user-centered service. Finally, this article provides insight into major advances and outstanding challenges in the fields of affinity analysis, bibliomining, and technology mining.