With the advent of network science, it has become possible to explore complex network systems, including social and information networks, by presenting them as graph models. The exponential growth of the total volume of scientific publications determines the relevance of the tasks of analyzing their interrelations. In network science, models and methods related to the field of so-called citation networks are being developed to solve these problems. However, network metrics are not used when analyzing publications in citation databases. The paper considers the issues of creating a decision support system for the selection of information sources based on data on the citation of scientific publications. A software package has been developed for making decisions on determining an important publication in a certain thematic area. The software package is based on a method of ranking publications by importance based on the analysis of citation networks, which allows you to identify publications that do not clearly stand out when ranking based on known bibliometric indicators or known measures of centrality of nodes in their pure form. A study and comparative analysis of software for visualization and research of all types of graphs and social networks has been conducted. Studies have been carried out confirming the effectiveness of the proposed decision support system in the selection of information sources.

The increasing complexity of decision–making pushes organizations to automate this process. One of the key elements of this is decision support systems. This paper examines their theoretical and practical aspects. The formulated definition, as well as the provided list of the main attributes and functions of systems of this type, made it possible to identify one of the most promising areas in the use of artificial intelligence in this area – multi-agent systems.

The conducted analysis of current decision support systems showed the main competitive advantages, common weaknesses of many of them, as well as the importance of developing a domestic intelligent decision support system.