Three-Way Bibliometrics Analytics for Supporting Literature Review

A theory of three-way decision concerns triadic thinking, triadic approaches to problem-solving, and triadic methods of computing. This paper applies the philosophy, principles, and methodology of three-way decision to the problem of conducting, constructing, and organizing a literature review in a field of study. First, we introduce the concept of a three-way literature review. Second, we consider the philosophy-theory-application triad for the literature review. We discuss three structures of the philosophy-theory-application triad from a geometric perspective that are useful for understanding the literature review. Third, we consider the who-what-when triad for the literature review. We apply a \(3\times 3\) method and propose a corresponding model of the literature review. The first 3 is the topic-author-time triad, which attempts to answer the fundamental question of “who did what when”. The second 3 represents a three-level analysis of each of the first three: (1) categorizing topics into the three levels of the core topics, emerging topics, and to-be-explored topics, (2) classifying authors into the three levels of active authors, frequent authors, and occasional authors, and (3) dividing articles into the three levels of initial investigations, further developments, and most recent studies. Finally, we use the \(3\times 3\) model to analyze papers published on three-way conflict analysis. The \(3\times 3\) model may help researchers conduct a literature review systematically, as well as guide the design and implementation of intelligent systems for supporting literature review.