Fifteen years of grey system theory research: A historical review and bibliometric analysis

The grey system theory, identified as one of the developed multiple attribute decision-making techniques, has been published by and indexed in over 300 internationally recognized refereed journals. The objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric study on publication and citation patterns of grey system theory published from 1996 to 2010 through a systemic search using the ISI web-based databases with a specific focus on grey relational analysis (GRA) and grey prediction. Results of the study demonstrate that there has been a substantial increase in the number of peer-reviewed papers on GRA or grey prediction indexed by the ISI Web of Knowledge. Also, citation analysis was used to examine the contributions of GRA and grey prediction studies. This bibliometric analysis would provide a ready reference for scholarly works on GRA and grey prediction, and serve as an informative summary kit for future research works. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.