{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,8]],"date-time":"2026-03-08T22:57:36Z","timestamp":1773010656153,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":40,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,6]],"date-time":"2018-03-06T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1520294400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004515","name":"Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["GUP-2017-105"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GUP-2017-105"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004515","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Q-neutrosophic soft sets are essentially neutrosophic soft sets characterized by three independent two-dimensional membership functions which stand for uncertainty, indeterminacy and falsity. Thus, it can be applied to two-dimensional imprecise, indeterminate and inconsistent data which appear in most real life problems. Relations are a suitable tool for describing correspondences between objects. In this study we introduce and discuss Q-neutrosophic soft relations, which can be discussed as a generalization of fuzzy soft relations, intuitionistic fuzzy soft relations, and neutrosophic soft relations. Q-neutrosophic soft relation is a sub Q-neutrosophic soft set of the Cartesian product of the Q-neutrosophic soft sets, in other words Q-neutrosophic soft relation is Q-neutrosophic soft sets in a Cartesian product of universes. We also present the notions of inverse, composition of Q-neutrosophic soft relations and functions along with some related theorems and properties. Reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity as well as equivalence relations and equivalence classes of Q-neutrosophic soft relations are also defined. Some properties of these concepts are presented and supported by real life examples. Finally, an algorithm to solve decision making problems using Q-neutrosophic soft relations is developed and verified by an example to show the efficiency of this method.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e20030172","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,6]],"date-time":"2018-03-06T12:16:27Z","timestamp":1520338587000},"page":"172","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":33,"title":["Q-Neutrosophic Soft Relation and Its Application in Decision Making"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0758-6062","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Majdoleen","family":"Abu Qamar","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Malaysia"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1659-7089","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nasruddin","family":"Hassan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Malaysia"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,3,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"287","article-title":"Neutrosophic set, a generalisation of the intuitionistic fuzzy sets","volume":"24","author":"Smarandache","year":"2005","journal-title":"Int. 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