The construction sector plays an important role in a country’s economic development. The financial performance of a company is a good indicator of its financial health and status. In Malaysia, the government encourages the construction industry to develop an advanced infrastructure related to health, transport, education and housing. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the operations and financial performance of construction sector companies have been affected recently. Additionally, uncertainty plays a vital role in the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process. Based on previous studies, there has been no comprehensive study conducted on the evaluation of the financial performance of construction companies by integrating entropy and fuzzy VIKOR models. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an MCDM model to evaluate and compare the financial performance of construction companies with an integrated entropy–fuzzy VIKOR model. A case study is carried out by evaluating the listed construction companies in Malaysia with the proposed model. The findings of this paper indicate that the company ECONBHD achieves the best financial performance over the study period. The significance of this paper is to determine the priority of the financial ratios and ranking of the construction companies with the proposed entropy–fuzzy VIKOR model.

Investors wish to obtain the best trade-off between the return and risk. In portfolio optimization, the mean-absolute deviation model has been used to achieve the target rate of return and minimize the risk. However, the maximization of entropy is not considered in the mean-absolute deviation model according to past studies. In fact, higher entropy values give higher portfolio diversifications, which can reduce portfolio risk. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a multi-objective optimization model, namely a mean-absolute deviation-entropy model for portfolio optimization by incorporating the maximization of entropy. In addition, the proposed model incorporates the optimal value of each objective function using a goal-programming approach. The objective functions of the proposed model are to maximize the mean return, minimize the absolute deviation and maximize the entropy of the portfolio. The proposed model is illustrated using returns of stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average that are listed in the New York Stock Exchange. This study will be of significant impact to investors because the results show that the proposed model outperforms the mean-absolute deviation model and the naive diversification strategy by giving higher a performance ratio. Furthermore, the proposed model generates higher portfolio mean returns than the MAD model and the naive diversification strategy. Investors will be able to generate a well-diversified portfolio in order to minimize unsystematic risk with the proposed model.

Statistical information theory is a method for quantifying the amount of stochastic uncertainty in a system. This theory originated in communication theory. The application of information theoretic approaches has been extended to different fields. This paper aims to perform a bibliometric analysis of information theoretic publications listed on the Scopus database. The data of 3701 documents were extracted from the Scopus database. The software used for analysis includes Harzing’s Publish or Perish and VOSviewer. Results including publication growth, subject areas, geographical contributions, country co-authorship, most cited publications, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and citation metrics are presented in this paper. Publication growth has been steady since 2003. The United States has the highest number of publications and received more than half of the total citations from all 3701 publications. Most of the publications are in computer science, engineering, and mathematics. The United States, the United Kingdom, and China have the highest collaboration across countries. The focus on information theoretic is slowly shifting from mathematical models to technology-driven applications such as machine learning and robotics. This study highlights the trends and developments of information theoretic publications, which helps researchers to understand the state of the art of information theoretic approaches for future contributions in this research domain.

Granger causality provides a framework that uses predictability to identify causation between time series variables. This is important to policymakers for effective policy management and recommendations. Granger causality is recognized as the primary advance on the causation problem. The objective of this paper is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of Granger causality publications indexed in the Web of Science database. Harzing’s Publish or Perish and VOSviewer were used for performance analysis and science mapping. The first paper indexed was published in 1981 and there has been an upward trend in the annual publication of Granger causality studies which are shifting towards the areas of environmental science, energy, and economics. Most of the publications are articles and proceeding papers under the areas of business economics, environmental science ecology, and neurosciences/neurology. China has the highest number of publications while the United States has the highest number of citations. England has the highest citation impact. This paper also constructed country co-authorship, co-analysis of cited references, cited sources, and cited authors, keyword co-occurrence, and keyword overlay visualization maps.

Biophotonics procures wide practicability in life sciences and medicines. The contribution of biophotonics is well recognized in various Nobel Prizes. Therefore, this paper aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of biophotonics publications. The scientific database used is the Web of Science database. Harzing's Publish or Perish and VOSviewer are the bibliometric tools used in this analysis. This study found an increasing trend in the number of publications in recent years as the number of publications peaked at 347 publications in 2020. Most of the documents are articles (3361 publications) and proceeding papers (1632 publications). The top three subject areas are Optics (3206 publications), Engineering (1706 publications) and Radiology, Nuclear Medicine, and Medical Imaging (1346 publications). The United States has the highest number of publications (2041 publications) and citation impact (38.07 citations per publication; h-index: 125). The top three publication titles are Proceedings of SPIE (920 publications), Journal of Biomedical Optics (599 publications), and Proceedings of the Society of Photo Optical Instrumentation Engineers SPIE (245 publications). The potential areas for future research include to overcome the optical penetration depth issue and to develop publicly available biosensors for the detection of common diseases.