---
title: "Atari (Arcade Learning Environment): papers using it"
description: "From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 77 archived papers mentioned Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Nov 2023 (6)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/atari-arcade-learning-environment
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/atari-arcade-learning-environment.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 77 archived papers mentioned Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Nov 2023 (6). (as of 2026-11-05)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-05T06:02:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Atari (Arcade Learning Environment)

[Browse dataset profiles](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/directory.md)

Simulators and benchmark suites for training and comparing reinforcement learning agents.

- data category: Reinforcement learning environments
- 0 papers in the last 7 days
- Names searched for: Arcade Learning Environment, Atari 2600, Atari games

Most-used data: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/datasets.md · All Reinforcement learning environments datasets: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/reinforcement-learning-environments.md



## Key findings

- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 77 archived papers mentioned Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Nov 2023 (6).
- No paper of the tracked journals mentioned Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) in the last 30 days (2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) was mentioned in 128 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (115), operations research (10) and information systems (1).
- 27 of them were published in 2025, against 0 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (5), Tsinghua University (5) and Eindhoven University of Technology (3).
- The journals publishing most of them were IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (15), Artificial Intelligence Review (8) and Machine Learning (8).
- The most-cited of them is “Sigmoid-weighted linear units for neural network function approximation in reinforcement learning” (Neural Networks, 2018), with 2,113 citations.
- Papers use Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) most often with MuJoCo (28), OpenAI Gym / Gymnasium (24) and StarCraft (15); it has 12 partners in the code and data network, in the group around ImageNet, CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100, MNIST / Fashion-MNIST.

## Mentions over 36 months

*Papers mentioning it by publication month, Nov 2023 to Oct 2026 (titles, abstracts and keywords; the full texts of earlier months are still being searched)*

| Trend | Nov 23–Oct 24 | Nov 24–Oct 25 | Nov 25–Oct 26 | 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
|  | 31 | 33 | 13 | 77 |

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 16 | 9 | 20 | 28 | 22 | 9 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 0 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 16 | 9 | 21 | 32 | 27 | 11 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 15 |
| 2 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 8 |
| 3 | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 8 |
| 4 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 7 |
| 5 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 7 |
| 6 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 6 |
| 7 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 6 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-artificial-intelligence.md) | 4 |
| 9 | [Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence.md) | 3 |
| 10 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 3 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 5 |
| 2 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 5 |
| 3 | [Eindhoven University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/eindhoven-university-of-technology.md) | 3 |
| 4 | [Institute of Automation](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/institute-of-automation.md) | 3 |
| 5 | [National University of Defense Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/national-university-of-defense-technology.md) | 3 |
| 6 | [Northwestern University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northwestern-university.md) | 3 |
| 7 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 3 |
| 8 | Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory | 3 |
| 9 | [University of Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 3 |
| 10 | Academia Sinica | 2 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 32 |
| 2 | United States | 13 |
| 3 | Germany | 10 |
| 4 | Canada | 7 |
| 5 | United Kingdom | 7 |
| 6 | Hong Kong | 7 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 6 |
| 8 | Belgium | 4 |
| 9 | Spain | 3 |
| 10 | India | 3 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [deep reinforcement learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/deep-reinforcement-learning.md) | 24 |
| 2 | Atari games | 19 |
| 3 | [reinforcement learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/reinforcement-learning.md) | 16 |
| 4 | sample efficiency | 9 |
| 5 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 7 |
| 6 | intrinsic rewards | 6 |
| 7 | data efficiency | 5 |
| 8 | deep Q-network | 5 |
| 9 | [energy efficiency](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/energy-efficiency.md) | 5 |
| 10 | exploration | 5 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,113 | 20.0 | [Sigmoid-weighted linear units for neural network function approximation in reinforcement learning](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2017.12.012) | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 2018-01-11 | Stefan Elfwing, Eiji Uchibe, Kenji Doya |
| 2 | 637 | 23.4 | [End-to-End Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontiers](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2024.3435937) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2024-07-30 | Li Chen, Penghao Wu, Kashyap Chitta et al. |
| 3 | 176 | 7.5 | [Survey on Large Language Model-Enhanced Reinforcement Learning: Concept, Taxonomy, and Methods](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2024.3497992) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2024-11-25 | Yuji Cao, Huan Qi Zhao, Yuheng Cheng et al. |
| 4 | 120 | 1.1 | [Self-Paced Prioritized Curriculum Learning With Coverage Penalty in Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2018.2790981) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2018-02-01 | Zhipeng Ren, Daoyi Dong, Huaxiong Li et al. |
| 5 | 110 | 4.1 | [Self-Supervised Multimodal Learning: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2024.3429301) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2024-08-07 | Yongshuo Zong, Oisin Mac Aodha, Timothy M. Hospedales |

## Used together with

Papers use Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) most often with MuJoCo (28), OpenAI Gym / Gymnasium (24) and StarCraft (15); it has 12 partners in the code and data network, in the group around ImageNet, CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100, MNIST / Fashion-MNIST.

*What papers use Atari (Arcade Learning Environment) together with (at least 3 papers; lift 1 = chance)*

| Used with | Type | Papers using both | Lift |
|---|---|---:|---:|
| [MuJoCo](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/mujoco.md) | Dataset | 28 | 69.8 |
| [OpenAI Gym / Gymnasium](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/openai-gym-gymnasium.md) | Dataset | 24 | 72.3 |
| [StarCraft](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/starcraft.md) | Dataset | 15 | 39.5 |
| [ImageNet](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/imagenet.md) | Dataset | 14 | 2.2 |
| [DeepMind Control Suite](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/deepmind-control-suite.md) | Dataset | 10 | 116.8 |
| [MNIST / Fashion-MNIST](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/mnist-fashion-mnist.md) | Dataset | 10 | 3.4 |
| [CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/cifar-10-cifar-100.md) | Dataset | 9 | 2.4 |
| [D4RL](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/d4rl.md) | Dataset | 5 | 34.0 |
| [Hugging Face Hub](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/hugging-face-hub.md) | Dataset | 3 | 2.4 |
| [Wikipedia](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/wikipedia.md) | Dataset | 3 | 1.1 |
| [Farama-Foundation/Minigrid](https://scholar4ai.com/code/github-farama-foundation-minigrid.md) | Code repository | 3 | 186.9 |
| [openai/baselines](https://scholar4ai.com/code/github-openai-baselines.md) | Code repository | 3 | 74.8 |

The whole network: https://scholar4ai.com/code/network.md

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Atari (Arcade Learning Environment). Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/atari-arcade-learning-environment

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-datasets-atari-arcade-learning-environment,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Atari (Arcade Learning Environment)},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/atari-arcade-learning-environment}},
  urldate = {2026-11-05},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).