2.1 Data sources

The bibliometric analysis data for this study were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC), a comprehensive standardized database widely used in bibliometric studies (3). In WOSCC, TS stands for Topic Sentence. The search formulas used in this study were set to TS = (“machine learning” OR “Learning Machine” OR “Transfer Learning” OR “Learning Transfer”) and TS= (“epilep^*”). The search period was limited to January 1, 2004 to December 22, 2023. Only “article” and “review article” were selected as article types, and the language was limited to English, resulting in 1,284 articles (Figure 1A). Based on the above formula, the results were exported to plain text files in txt and csv formats for searching on WOSCC. The search was completed on December 22, 2023 to prevent data bias due to database updates.

(A) Flowchart and annual results of paper screening for ML in epilepsy research, 2004–2023. (B) Annual publication volume and annual citation frequency of relevant articles in the last two decades (2023 data as of December 22nd).