What are the most common topics in recent statistics research?

In the last 30 days, the most frequent OpenAlex keywords in papers from the tracked statistics journals were “asymptotic distribution” (9), “functional data analysis” (7), “asymptotic normality” (5), “dimensionality reduction” (5) and “feature selection” (5).

Which universities and institutions publish the most statistics research?

In the last 30 days, the institutions with the most papers in the tracked statistics journals were Politecnico di Milano (4), Nanyang Technological University (3), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (3), Charles University (3) and Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (3).

Which countries publish the most statistics research?

Counting papers with at least one author at an institution in the country, the leaders over the last 30 days were China (20), United Kingdom (16), United States (16), Italy (13) and Canada (11).

Which equations and models do recent statistics research papers use most?

Counting papers that mention them by name in the title, abstract, keywords or full text, the most frequent in the tracked statistics journals over the last 30 days were Principal component analysis (PCA) (11), Kullback-Leibler divergence (5), Gradient boosting (XGBoost) (4), LASSO (4) and Quantile regression (4).

What data do recent statistics research papers use?

Counting papers that mention a dataset by name, the kinds of data used most over the last 30 days were Optimization benchmark instances (9), Stock market indices (4), Medical and clinical datasets (3), Satellite and geospatial data (2) and US household and labour surveys (2); the most-mentioned datasets were OR-Library (9), S&P 500 (3), American Community Survey (2), UK Biobank (2) and ADNI (1).

Which statistics research topics are rising?

Compared with the ranking on 2026-10-23, the keywords that climbed the most were “asymptotic distribution” (new, now #1), “functional data analysis” (new, now #2), “asymptotic normality” (new, now #3), “dimensionality reduction” (new, now #3) and “feature selection” (new, now #3).

How current is this data?

It is rebuilt from OpenAlex 4 times a day (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00, UTC+09:00); the last update was 2026-10-30 12:46 UTC+09:00. OpenAlex usually indexes new papers within a few days of publication.

Statistics research rankings

Papers in the 16 tracked statistics journals, window 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days). Keywords, institutions, web domains and countries are ranked by paper count. Also as Markdown.

Latest monthly report: September 2026 · all 36 months

128Papers (30 days)

12Papers (last 7 days)

16Journals

197Institutions

39Countries

189Web domains

Key findings#

In the last 30 days (2026-10-01 to 2026-10-30), 128 papers were published in the 16 tracked statistics journals (as indexed by OpenAlex).
The most frequent keywords were “asymptotic distribution” (9), “functional data analysis” (7) and “asymptotic normality” (5).
The institutions with the most papers were Politecnico di Milano (4), Nanyang Technological University (3) and Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (3).
China was involved in 16% of the papers (20), followed by United Kingdom (16) and United States (16).
Among institution web domains, .edu.cn appeared on 16% of the papers.
The most-mentioned equations and models were Principal component analysis (PCA) (11), Kullback-Leibler divergence (5) and Gradient boosting (XGBoost) (4).
The most-mentioned kinds of data were Optimization benchmark instances (9), Stock market indices (4) and Medical and clinical datasets (3); the most-mentioned datasets were OR-Library (9), S&P 500 (3) and American Community Survey (2).
Rising since 2026-10-23: “asymptotic distribution” (new, now #1), “functional data analysis” (new, now #2) and “asymptotic normality” (new, now #3).

Papers per day#

2026-10-012026-10-30

Show the numbers

Papers per publication date
Date	Papers
2026-10-01	16
2026-10-02	2
2026-10-03	1
2026-10-04	0
2026-10-05	4
2026-10-06	2
2026-10-07	5
2026-10-08	4
2026-10-09	12
2026-10-10	6
2026-10-11	3
2026-10-12	6
2026-10-13	7
2026-10-14	8
2026-10-15	7
2026-10-16	7
2026-10-17	4
2026-10-18	1
2026-10-19	1
2026-10-20	8
2026-10-21	1
2026-10-22	5
2026-10-23	6
2026-10-24	4
2026-10-25	3
2026-10-26	3
2026-10-27	2
2026-10-28	0
2026-10-29	0
2026-10-30	0

Growing lately# Trends →

Papers in Jul 2026–Sep 2026 beyond what the keyword's share in Oct 2023–Jun 2026 predicts
Keyword	Papers Jul 2026–Sep 2026	vs. earlier share
spatial heterogeneity	11	+9
identifiability	10	+7
competing risks	9	+6
causal inference	8	+5
structural breaks	6	+4

Most-cited papers of the past three years# All →

Most-cited papers published since 2023-10-30 (citations counted by OpenAlex)
#	Citations	Per month	Title	Journal	Published	Authors
1	87	2.7	Multiple-output quantile regression neural network	Statistics and Computing	2024-03-08	Ruiting Hao, X. Yang
2	75	2.6	Automatic cross-validation in structured models: Is it time to leave out leave-one-out?	Spatial Statistics	2024-06-12	Aritz Adín, Elias Teixeira Krainski, Amanda Lenzi et al.
3	69	2.0	Detecting and diagnosing prior and likelihood sensitivity with power-scaling	Statistics and Computing	2023-12-31	Noa Kallioinen, Topi Paananen, Paul‐Christian Bürkner et al.
4	40	1.6	On the consistency of supervised learning with missing values	Statistical Papers	2024-09-12	Julie Josse, Jacob M. Chen, Nicolas Prost et al.
5	34	1.0	Deep graphical regression for jointly moderate and extreme Australian wildfires	Spatial Statistics	2024-01-17	Daniela Cisneros, Jordan Richards, Ashok Dahal et al.

Rising keywords#

Keywords that climbed the most since 2026-10-23
#	Keyword	Papers	vs 2026-10-23
1	asymptotic distribution	9	new
2	functional data analysis	7	new
3	asymptotic normality	5	new
3	dimensionality reduction	5	new
3	feature selection	5	new
3	functional data	5	new
7	consistency	4	new
7	goodness-of-fit tests	4	new
7	longitudinal data	4	new
7	nonparametric estimation	4	new

Top research keywords#

Top 20 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Keyword	Papers	Last 7 days
1	asymptotic distribution	9	1
2	functional data analysis	7	0
3	asymptotic normality	5	2
3	dimensionality reduction	5	0
3	feature selection	5	0
3	functional data	5	0
7	consistency	4	1
7	goodness-of-fit tests	4	0
7	longitudinal data	4	0
7	nonparametric estimation	4	0
7	spatial dependence	4	0
12	Hilbert spaces	3	0
12	LASSO	3	0
12	convergence rate	3	1
12	copulas	3	0
12	differential privacy	3	0
12	functional time series	3	0
12	high-dimensional data	3	0
12	hyperparameter optimization	3	0
12	kernel density estimation	3	0

Top universities and research institutions#

Top 20 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Institution	Papers	Last 7 days
1	Politecnico di Milano	4	0
2	Nanyang Technological University	3	0
2	Universidade de Santiago de Compostela	3	0
2	Charles University	3	0
2	Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement	3	0
2	University of Southampton	3	1
2	University of Turin	3	0
8	Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore	2	1
8	University of Rome Tor Vergata	2	1
8	Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique	2	0
8	University of Alberta	2	0
8	National University of Singapore	2	0
8	Universidad de Granada	2	0
8	Donghua University	2	0
8	University of Toronto	2	0
8	Jilin University	2	0
8	TU Dortmund University	2	0
8	Nankai University	2	0
8	University of Michigan	2	0
8	Southern University of Science and Technology	2	0

Top institution web domains#

Top 20 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Web domain	Papers	Last 7 days
1	polimi.it	4	0
2	cuni.cz	3	0
2	inrae.fr	3	0
2	ntu.edu.sg	3	0
2	southampton.ac.uk	3	1
2	unito.it	3	0
2	usc.gal	3	0
8	cnrs.fr	2	0
8	dhu.edu.cn	2	0
8	ed.ac.uk	2	0
8	gla.ac.uk	2	0
8	hu-berlin.de	2	0
8	isical.ac.in	2	0
8	jlu.edu.cn	2	0
8	kaust.edu.sa	2	0
8	lancaster.ac.uk	2	0
8	maharajas.ac.in	2	0
8	mq.edu.au	2	0
8	nankai.edu.cn	2	0
8	nus.edu.sg	2	0

Top countries#

Top 20 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Country	Papers	Last 7 days
1	China (CN)	20	3
2	United Kingdom (GB)	16	1
2	United States (US)	16	1
4	Italy (IT)	13	2
5	Canada (CA)	11	0
5	Spain (ES)	11	0
7	Germany (DE)	8	1
7	Japan (JP)	8	4
9	India (IN)	6	0
10	France (FR)	5	0
10	Singapore (SG)	5	0
12	Australia (AU)	4	0
12	Czechia (CZ)	4	0
12	Sweden (SE)	4	0
15	Saudi Arabia (SA)	3	0
15	Turkey (TR)	3	0
17	Finland (FI)	2	0
17	Hong Kong (HK)	2	1
17	Iran (IR)	2	0
17	South Korea (KR)	2	0

Research fields#

Top 7 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Field	Papers	Last 7 days
1	Mathematics	80	7
2	Economics, Econometrics and Finance	23	2
3	Computer Science	13	1
4	Decision Sciences	7	1
5	Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	1	0
5	Engineering	1	1
5	Neuroscience	1	0

Papers per journal#

Top 16 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Journal	Papers	Last 7 days
1	Journal of Multivariate Analysis	23	0
2	Statistics and Computing	21	2
3	Statistics & Probability Letters	15	3
4	Computational Statistics	9	1
4	Spatial Statistics	9	0
6	Computational Statistics & Data Analysis	7	0
6	Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice	7	1
6	Statistical Papers	7	1
9	Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science	5	2
9	Metrika	5	0
11	Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics	4	0
11	Journal of the Korean Statistical Society	4	0
11	Lifetime Data Analysis	4	0
14	Econometrics and Statistics	3	0
14	Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference	3	1
16	Statistical Methods & Applications	2	1

Most-used equations and models#

Top 10 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Equation or model	Formula	Papers
1	Principal component analysis (PCA)	$\max_{\lVert w \rVert = 1}\ w^\top \Sigma\, w$	11
2	Kullback-Leibler divergence	$D_{\mathrm{KL}}(P \parallel Q) = \sum_x P(x) \log \frac{P(x)}{Q(x)}$	5
3	Gradient boosting (XGBoost)	$\mathcal{L} = \sum_i l(y_i, \hat y_i) + \sum_k \Omega(f_k),\quad \Omega(f) = \gamma T + \tfrac{1}{2}\lambda \lVert w \rVert^2$	4
3	LASSO	$\hat\beta = \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{\beta}\ \lVert y - X\beta \rVert_2^2 + \lambda \lVert \beta \rVert_1$	4
3	Quantile regression	$\hat\beta_\tau = \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{\beta} \sum_{i} \rho_\tau(y_i - x_i^\top\beta),\quad \rho_\tau(u) = u\,(\tau - \mathbf{1}\{u < 0\})$	4
6	Bayes' theorem	$P(A \mid B) = \frac{P(B \mid A)\, P(A)}{P(B)}$	3
6	Random forest	$\hat f(x) = \frac{1}{B}\sum_{b=1}^{B} T_b(x)$	3
8	k-means clustering	$\min_{C_1, \dots, C_k} \sum_{j=1}^{k} \sum_{x \in C_j} \lVert x - \mu_j \rVert^2$	2
8	Linear and integer programming	$\min_{x}\ c^\top x\ \ \text{s.t.}\ \ A x \le b,\ x \ge 0,\ x_j \in \mathbb{Z}\ (j \in I)$	2
8	Logistic regression (logit)	$\Pr(y = 1 \mid x) = \frac{1}{1 + e^{-x^\top\beta}}$	2

Most-used data#

Top 10 · 2026-10-01 – 2026-10-30 (30 days)
#	Data category	Most-mentioned datasets	Papers
1	Optimization benchmark instances	OR-Library (9)	9
2	Stock market indices	S&P 500 (3), CSI 300 / Shanghai Composite (1)	4
3	Medical and clinical datasets	UK Biobank (2), ADNI (1)	3
4	Satellite and geospatial data	Sentinel / Copernicus (1), MODIS (1)	2
4	US household and labour surveys	American Community Survey (2)	2
6	China statistical yearbooks and regional indices	Marketization index (Fan Gang) (1)	1
6	Credit scoring and lending data	German Credit (UCI Statlog) (1)	1
6	ESG and sustainability ratings	MSCI ESG / KLD (1)	1
6	International trade and input-output data	WITS / TRAINS tariff data (1)	1
6	Mutual fund and hedge fund data	Lipper / TASS (1)	1

Latest statistics papers#

Latest statistics papers
Date	Title	Journal	Authors	Affiliations
2026-10-27	Exact Moments of Two-Sample Rank Statistics: Improving the Approximate Distribution and Applications to Lepage-Type Tests	Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice	Hikaru Yamaguchi, Hidetoshi Murakami, Markus Neuhäuser	Tokyo University of Science; Koblenz University of Applied Sciences
2026-10-27	A Bayes-motivated quadratic-form test for high-dimensional mean testing	Computational Statistics	Daojiang He, Shicheng Xu, Jing Zhou
2026-10-26	A selective overview of population size estimation in humanitarian upheavals	Statistical Methods & Applications	Alessio Farcomeni, Rosario Barone	University of Rome Tor Vergata; Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
2026-10-26	Quasi-BIC of SEM for jump-diffusion processes based on high-frequency data	Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science	Shogo Kusano, Masayuki Uchida	Kumamoto University; Japan Science and Technology Agency; Center for Mathematical Modeling and Data Science, The University of Osaka; …
2026-10-26	Local increment inference for time-inhomogeneous drift in Gaussian processes	Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science	Yasutaka Shimizu	Waseda University
2026-10-25	Matching-based estimation of causal quantile exposure response functions for continuous treatments	Statistics and Computing	Luca Merlo, Francesca Dominici, Lea Petrella et al.	Link Campus University; Harvard University; Sapienza University of Rome; …
2026-10-25	Sparse linear regression: sequential convex relaxation and support recovery	Statistics and Computing	Shujun Bi, Yonghua Yang, PAN SHAO-HUA	South China University of Technology
2026-10-25	Strong convergence of Euler–Maruyama schemes for additive fractional SDEs with Lipschitz drift	Statistics & Probability Letters	Tsukasa Moritoki	Okayama University
2026-10-24	Parity-odd polyspectra of spatial point processes	Statistics & Probability Letters	Daniel E. Clark	University of Southampton
2026-10-24	Quantile-based empirical likelihood for ROC curves	Statistics & Probability Letters	Pengfei Liu, Yiming Liu, Zhi Liu et al.	University of Macau; Lingnan University
2026-10-24	A construction method for space-filling orthogonal Latin hypercube designs	Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference	Wenlong Li	Beijing Jiaotong University
2026-10-24	Transfer learning in regression with outliers	Statistical Papers	Bingbing Wang, Jiaqi Wang, Yu Tang	Soochow University
2026-10-23	Variable selection and regularization path comparison for binary response model	Computational Statistics	Merve Kandemir Çetinkaya	Ostim Technical University
2026-10-23	Large deviations of large uniform spacings	Statistics & Probability Letters	Mainza Mbokoma, Xiangfeng Yang	Linköping University
2026-10-23	Generalized and scalable deep Gaussian process emulation	Computational Statistics & Data Analysis	Deyu Ming, Daniel Williamson	University College London; University of Exeter

Questions this page answers#

What are the most common topics in recent statistics research?: In the last 30 days, the most frequent OpenAlex keywords in papers from the tracked statistics journals were “asymptotic distribution” (9), “functional data analysis” (7), “asymptotic normality” (5), “dimensionality reduction” (5) and “feature selection” (5).
Which universities and institutions publish the most statistics research?: In the last 30 days, the institutions with the most papers in the tracked statistics journals were Politecnico di Milano (4), Nanyang Technological University (3), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (3), Charles University (3) and Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (3).
Which countries publish the most statistics research?: Counting papers with at least one author at an institution in the country, the leaders over the last 30 days were China (20), United Kingdom (16), United States (16), Italy (13) and Canada (11).
Which equations and models do recent statistics research papers use most?: Counting papers that mention them by name in the title, abstract, keywords or full text, the most frequent in the tracked statistics journals over the last 30 days were Principal component analysis (PCA) (11), Kullback-Leibler divergence (5), Gradient boosting (XGBoost) (4), LASSO (4) and Quantile regression (4).
What data do recent statistics research papers use?: Counting papers that mention a dataset by name, the kinds of data used most over the last 30 days were Optimization benchmark instances (9), Stock market indices (4), Medical and clinical datasets (3), Satellite and geospatial data (2) and US household and labour surveys (2); the most-mentioned datasets were OR-Library (9), S&P 500 (3), American Community Survey (2), UK Biobank (2) and ADNI (1).
Which statistics research topics are rising?: Compared with the ranking on 2026-10-23, the keywords that climbed the most were “asymptotic distribution” (new, now #1), “functional data analysis” (new, now #2), “asymptotic normality” (new, now #3), “dimensionality reduction” (new, now #3) and “feature selection” (new, now #3).
How current is this data?: It is rebuilt from OpenAlex 4 times a day (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00, UTC+09:00); the last update was 2026-10-30 12:46 UTC+09:00. OpenAlex usually indexes new papers within a few days of publication.

Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Statistics research rankings. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 30, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics

@misc{scholar4ai-categories-statistics,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Statistics research rankings},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics}},
  urldate = {2026-10-30},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

Free to reuse for non-commercial purposes with attribution (CC BY-NC 4.0).