{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,11]],"date-time":"2026-06-11T16:42:34Z","timestamp":1781196154006,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":59,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,11]],"date-time":"2023-01-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1673395200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"FCT\u2014Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology","award":["UIDB\/04928\/2020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["UIDB\/04928\/2020"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["BDCC"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently become the focus of academia and practitioners, reflecting the substantial evolution of scientific production in this area, particularly during the COVID-19 era. However, there is no known academic work exploring the major trends and the extant and emerging themes of scientific research production of AI leading journals. To this end, this study is to specify the research progress on AI among the top-tier journals by highlighting the development of its trends, topics, and key themes. This article employs an integrated bibliometric analysis using evaluative and relational metrics to analyze, map, and outline the key trends and themes of articles published in the leading AI academic journals, based on the latest CiteScore of Scopus-indexed journals between 2020 and 2021. The findings depict the major trends, conceptual and social structures, and key themes of AI leading journals\u2019 publications during the given period. This paper represents valuable implications for concerned scholars, research centers, higher education institutions, and various organizations within different domains. Limitations and directions for further research are outlined.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/bdcc7010012","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,11]],"date-time":"2023-01-11T04:45:58Z","timestamp":1673412358000},"page":"12","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":33,"title":["Exploring the Major Trends and Emerging Themes of Artificial Intelligence in the Scientific Leading Journals amidst the COVID-19 Era"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"7","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9359-763X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohammad","family":"Soliman","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Head of Scientific Research Department, University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Salalah P.O. Box 74, Oman"},{"name":"Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, Fayoum University, Fayoum 63514, Egypt"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2173-4065","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tarek","family":"Fatnassi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Computer Science, College of Computing and Information Sciences, University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Salalah P.O. Box 74, Oman"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7442-7240","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Islam","family":"Elgammal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Business Administration Department, College of Business, University of Jeddah, Jeddah 23218, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Tourism Studies Department, Faculty of Tourism, Suez Canal University, The Ring Road, Ismailia 41522, Egypt"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ronnie","family":"Figueiredo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre of Applied Research in Management and Economics (CARME), School of Technology and Management (ESTG), Polytechnic of Leiria, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal"},{"name":"Research Center in Business Sciences (NECE), University of Beira Interior (UBI), 6201-001 Covilh\u00e3, Portugal"},{"name":"Spinner Innovation Centre (SIC), 2840-626 Lisbon, Portugal"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shi, Y., Yang, K., Yang, Z., and Zhou, Y. 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