A Bibliometric Analysis of Agent-Based Systems in Cybersecurity and Broader Security Domains: Trends and Insights

Bibliometric analysis, a quantitative tool, assesses research trends, impacts, and interrelationships within a given field. Using data from the Web of Science, this research provides a thorough bibliometric examination of agent-based cybersecurity systems. We explore the motivation and significance of studying agent-based systems in cybersecurity, along with an overview of the existing literature. Using tools such as VOSviewer and Biblioshiny, we examine the growth and focus areas of publications over time, identify top contributors, and analyze collaboration patterns. The study also looks at the evolution of citation dynamics, their impact on field development, and thematic clusters of research topics. We identify major themes and their linkages, visually connecting frequently used phrases to create a hierarchical representation of the research landscape. Significant contributions at the intersection of agent-based systems and cybersecurity are emphasized. Our findings highlight growing trends, major research areas, and collaboration networks in the field. Key statistical findings show that publications on agent-based systems and cybersecurity have steadily increased since 2013, culminating in 2023 with over 1,200. Citations also peaked in 2023, at over 30,000. The top category, Computer Science Information Systems (1,424 publications), emphasizes the expanding importance of information security and artificial intelligence. Research articles are the most common document type (6,441). China is the largest contributor, followed by the US and India. Collaboration is prevalent, with important writers such as Zhang Y and Wang J driving cross-disciplinary research in fields like reinforcement learning and blockchain. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis entirely focused on the intersection of agent-based systems and cybersecurity.