Metaphor-based metaheuristics, a call for action: the elephant in the room

Claus Aranha (1) , Christian L Camacho Villalón (2) , Felipe Campelo (3) , Marco Dorigo (2) , Rubén Ruiz (4) , Marc Sevaux (5, 6) , Kenneth Sörensen (7) , Thomas Stützle (2)

1 Université de Tsukuba = University of Tsukuba
2 ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
3 Aston University [Birmingham]
4 UPV - Universitat Politècnica de València = Universitad Politecnica de Valencia = Polytechnic University of Valencia
5 UBS - Université de Bretagne Sud
6 Lab-STICC_DECIDE - Equipe DECIDE
7 UA - University of Antwerp

Taking inspiration from natural behaviors to devise new optimization algorithms has played an important role in the history of the field of metaheuristics (Sörensen et al. 2017). Unfortunately, in the last two decades we have been witnessing a new trend by which dozens of metaphor-based metaheuristics based on the most diverse possible set of natural, artificial, social, and sometimes even supernatural phenomena and behaviors are proposed, without a clear motivation beyond the desire of their authors to publish their papers.

Domaines: Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]

Claus Aranha, Christian L Camacho Villalón, Felipe Campelo, Marco Dorigo, Rubén Ruiz, et al.. Metaphor-based metaheuristics, a call for action: the elephant in the room. Swarm Intelligence, 2021, ⟨10.1007/s11721-021-00202-9⟩. ⟨hal-03460953⟩