Exploring research fronts and topics of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence application for cultural heritage and museum research

Abstract Modern technologies have supported the preservation, curation and reuse of human cultural heritage assets and resources, the latest development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data technologies are expected to have great potentials in the datafication, digitization, and reuse of such resources. With the aim to reveal the research fronts and topics of such potential development, the paper conducted a bibliometric analysis based on 206 related articles from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The paper presents the findings on publication trends, main publication outlets and disciplines, main keyword clusters and research gaps. The paper also finds that the current research scope of AI and Big Data in cultural heritage and museum applications is still in the early stage of storage, calculation and presentation of Big Data. The paper help researchers, funding agencies and practitioners to understand the current status of AI and Big Data applications in cultural heritage and museum.