Corporate citation network: who cites research by companies
A citation network around corporate research in the 400 tracked journals: which companies' papers are cited, by which companies, institutions and countries, and what corporate papers cite in turn. A citation link is one paper citing another, both in the tracked journals (from OpenAlex references): the citing papers are those published since 2023, the cited ones any archived paper. A company is an institution OpenAlex classifies as a company. A link counts once for each company among the cited paper's affiliations, so a paper co-written by two companies counts for both, and once for each company, institution or country of the citing paper. OpenAlex sometimes lists one company under more than one record. Also as Markdown.
Corporate research · Industry–university links
Key findings#
- Since 2023, papers in the tracked journals cite other archived papers 1,769,041 times; 52,450 of those links (3.0%) go to papers with an author at a company, which make up 2.6% of the archive.
- Tencent (China) is cited most (3,171 links to 403 of its papers), followed by Alibaba Group (China) (2,376) and Google (United States) (2,286).
- Universities build most on corporate research: 97% of the links to corporate papers come from papers with a university author, 7% from papers with a company author.
- Corporate papers cite corporate research more than others do: 12% of their links go to papers with a company author, against 3.0% of all links.
- Between two different companies, the largest flow is papers with Huawei Technologies (China) authors citing papers with Tencent (China) authors (25 links).
- Self-citation is rare: for the 20 most-cited companies, 1% of the links come from the company's own papers.
- The institutions citing corporate research most are Chinese Academy of Sciences (1,739), Tsinghua University (1,163) and Zhejiang University (1,087).
Company to company#
From companies to the countries citing them#
Most-cited companies#
| # | Company | Country | Papers cited | Links | From universities | From other companies | Own papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tencent (China) | China | 403 | 3,171 | 98% | 6% | 2% |
| 2 | Alibaba Group (China) | China | 276 | 2,376 | 98% | 7% | 1% |
| 3 | Google (United States) | United States | 159 | 2,286 | 98% | 9% | 0% |
| 4 | Huawei Technologies (China) | China | 256 | 2,049 | 98% | 6% | 2% |
| 5 | Jingdong (China) | China | 201 | 1,932 | 99% | 6% | 4% |
| 6 | Microsoft Research Asia (China) | China | 135 | 1,758 | 98% | 11% | 1% |
| 7 | Meta (United States) | United States | 123 | 1,639 | 98% | 8% | 1% |
| 8 | Amazon (United States) | United States | 205 | 1,396 | 95% | 6% | 1% |
| 9 | Microsoft (United States) | United States | 147 | 1,319 | 97% | 8% | 0% |
| 10 | Software Competence Center Hagenberg (Austria) | Austria | 33 | 1,306 | 98% | 0% | 2% |
| 11 | Baidu (China) | China | 167 | 1,200 | 99% | 10% | 3% |
| 12 | Sensetime (China) | China | 94 | 774 | 99% | 10% | 2% |
| 13 | ByteDance (China) | China | 90 | 739 | 97% | 8% | 2% |
| 14 | Intel (United States) | United States | 56 | 658 | 98% | 11% | 2% |
| 15 | IBM (United States) | United States | 81 | 651 | 97% | 7% | 1% |
| 16 | Didi Chuxing (China) | China | 42 | 643 | 96% | 2% | 2% |
| 17 | Telefonica Research and Development | Spain | 14 | 625 | 97% | 4% | 0% |
| 18 | Telefónica (Spain) | Spain | 7 | 604 | 97% | 4% | 0% |
| 19 | China Telecom | China | 104 | 516 | 98% | 11% | 5% |
| 20 | Samsung (South Korea) | South Korea | 80 | 497 | 99% | 4% | 0% |
| 21 | Snap (United States) | United States | 13 | 464 | 98% | 12% | 0% |
| 22 | Meituan (China) | China | 72 | 454 | 98% | 7% | 1% |
| 23 | Alibaba DAMO Academy (China) | China | 46 | 427 | 98% | 9% | 0% |
| 24 | State Grid Corporation of China (China) | China | 84 | 424 | 99% | 5% | 1% |
| 25 | Ant Group (China) | China | 74 | 405 | 98% | 8% | 2% |
| 26 | Amazon (Germany) | Germany | 14 | 399 | 95% | 8% | 0% |
| 27 | NIIT (India) | India | 1 | 360 | 98% | 1% | 0% |
| 28 | Naver (South Korea) | South Korea | 29 | 356 | 96% | 8% | 1% |
| 29 | Nvidia (United States) | United States | 46 | 347 | 97% | 10% | 2% |
| 30 | Capgemini (United Kingdom) | United Kingdom | 2 | 343 | 98% | 1% | 0% |
| 31 | China Telecom (China) | China | 59 | 331 | 98% | 12% | 5% |
| 32 | Megvii (China) | China | 29 | 320 | 98% | 15% | 2% |
| 33 | Yahoo (United States) | United States | 10 | 307 | 99% | 16% | 0% |
| 34 | Lenovo (China) | China | 40 | 298 | 98% | 6% | 1% |
| 35 | IFlyTek (China) | China | 35 | 297 | 98% | 5% | 4% |
| 36 | Kuaishou (China) | China | 39 | 295 | 99% | 9% | 2% |
| 37 | Adobe Systems (United States) | United States | 50 | 292 | 98% | 10% | 0% |
| 38 | Mininglamp (China) | China | 29 | 282 | 99% | 4% | 0% |
| 39 | China Mobile (China) | China | 61 | 271 | 99% | 3% | 0% |
| 40 | China Electronics Technology Group Corporation | China | 56 | 260 | 98% | 7% | 0% |
Companies citing the most#
| # | Company | Country | Links made | To corporate papers | To its own | Cites most |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China Telecom | China | 1,329 | 11% | 2% | Northwestern Polytechnical University, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National University of Defense Technology |
| 2 | Tencent (China) | China | 1,222 | 23% | 6% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University |
| 3 | Alibaba Group (China) | China | 1,200 | 17% | 2% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences |
| 4 | Huawei Technologies (China) | China | 1,146 | 18% | 3% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University |
| 5 | Jingdong (China) | China | 1,118 | 19% | 7% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanyang Technological University |
| 6 | China Telecom (China) | China | 888 | 8% | 2% | Northwestern Polytechnical University, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National University of Defense Technology |
| 7 | Amazon (United States) | United States | 660 | 12% | 2% | National University of Singapore, University of Science and Technology of China, Peking University |
| 8 | State Grid Corporation of China (China) | China | 647 | 7% | 1% | Northwestern Polytechnical University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Tsinghua University |
| 9 | China Mobile (China) | China | 640 | 8% | 0% | Chongqing University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China |
| 10 | Baidu (China) | China | 555 | 21% | 6% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences |
| 11 | ByteDance (China) | China | 463 | 22% | 3% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanyang Technological University |
| 12 | China United Network Communications Group (China) | China | 425 | 7% | 0% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xidian University, Fuzhou University |
| 13 | Ant Group (China) | China | 418 | 17% | 2% | Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications |
| 14 | Inspur (China) | China | 379 | 9% | 1% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Jiaotong University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University |
| 15 | China Electronics Technology Group Corporation | China | 343 | 14% | 0% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Automation |
| 16 | Meituan (China) | China | 342 | 16% | 1% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beihang University |
| 17 | Meta (United States) | United States | 294 | 23% | 4% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanyang Technological University |
| 18 | Microsoft (United States) | United States | 293 | 17% | 2% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, University of Science and Technology of China |
| 19 | Sensetime (China) | China | 290 | 29% | 6% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| 20 | Samsung (South Korea) | South Korea | 287 | 8% | 0% | Sungkyunkwan University, Monash University, Google (United States) |
| 21 | IFlyTek (China) | China | 261 | 17% | 5% | University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan University |
| 22 | Prometeia (Italy) | Italy | 246 | 11% | 9% | Centre for Economic Policy Research, University of Edinburgh |
| 23 | Sinopec (China) | China | 244 | 5% | 0% | Tsinghua University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu University |
| 24 | Lenovo (China) | China | 235 | 17% | 2% | University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University |
| 25 | China Mobile Research Institute | China | 209 | 8% | 1% | Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Peking University |
| 26 | Alibaba DAMO Academy (China) | China | 202 | 22% | 0% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology |
| 27 | China Southern Power Grid (China) | China | 202 | 2% | 0% | Wuhan University, Renmin University of China, Beijing University of Technology |
| 28 | China North Industries Group Corporation (China) | China | 200 | 7% | 0% | Beihang University, Tsinghua University, Nanyang Technological University |
| 29 | Microsoft Research Asia (China) | China | 200 | 23% | 6% | Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences |
| 30 | Didi Chuxing (China) | China | 199 | 11% | 5% | Sun Yat-sen University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Zhejiang University |
Between companies#
Who cites corporate research#
| Citing paper has an author at | Links | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Universities | 50,919 | 97% |
| Research facilities | 7,148 | 14% |
| Government bodies | 3,867 | 7% |
| Companies | 3,843 | 7% |
| Healthcare institutions | 1,360 | 3% |
| Nonprofits | 764 | 1% |
| Other institutions | 706 | 1% |
| Funders | 211 | 0% |
| Archives | 57 | 0% |
Citing institutions#
What corporate papers cite#
| # | Institution | Kind | Country | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chinese Academy of Sciences | Government | China | 1,177 |
| 2 | Tsinghua University | University | China | 844 |
| 3 | Nanyang Technological University | University | Singapore | 748 |
| 4 | Northwestern Polytechnical University | University | China | 709 |
| 5 | University of Chinese Academy of Sciences | University | China | 676 |
| 6 | Peking University | University | China | 533 |
| 7 | University of Technology Sydney | University | Australia | 516 |
| 8 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University | University | Hong Kong | 506 |
| 9 | Huazhong University of Science and Technology | University | China | 496 |
| 10 | Zhejiang University | University | China | 485 |
| 11 | Monash University | University | Australia | 483 |
| 12 | Wuhan University | University | China | 468 |
| 13 | University of Electronic Science and Technology of China | University | China | 461 |
| 14 | National University of Singapore | University | Singapore | 452 |
| 15 | University of Science and Technology of China | University | China | 445 |
| 16 | Sun Yat-sen University | University | China | 441 |
| 17 | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | University | China | 440 |
| 18 | Harbin Institute of Technology | University | China | 435 |
| 19 | Xi'an Jiaotong University | University | China | 428 |
| 20 | Beihang University | University | China | 424 |
| 21 | Institute of Automation | Research facility | China | 418 |
| 22 | The University of Sydney | University | Australia | 397 |
| 23 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique | Government | France | 394 |
| 24 | Chinese University of Hong Kong | University | Hong Kong | 376 |
| 25 | Beijing Institute of Technology | University | China | 368 |
| 26 | Xidian University | University | China | 356 |
| 27 | Tianjin University | University | China | 354 |
| 28 | University of Oxford | University | United Kingdom | 332 |
| 29 | National University of Defense Technology | University | China | 329 |
| 30 | Peng Cheng Laboratory | Research facility | China | 327 |
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Corporate citation network: who cites research by companies. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/corporate-citations
@misc{scholar4ai-corporate-citations,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Corporate citation network: who cites research by companies},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/corporate-citations}},
urldate = {2026-11-02},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}