---
title: "M3 / M4 / M5 competitions: research papers using this data"
description: "From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 85 archived papers mentioned M3 / M4 / M5 competitions in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Apr 2025 (6)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/m3-m4-m5-competitions
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/m3-m4-m5-competitions.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 85 archived papers mentioned M3 / M4 / M5 competitions in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Apr 2025 (6). (as of 2026-11-04)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-04T18:03:26+09:00
window: 2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# M3 / M4 / M5 competitions

[Browse dataset profiles](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/directory/page/4.md)

Collections used to compare forecasting and time-series classification methods.

- data category: Time-series and traffic benchmarks
- 0 papers in the last 7 days
- Names searched for: M3 competition, M4 competition, M5 competition, M4 dataset, M5 dataset

Most-used data: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/datasets.md · All Time-series and traffic benchmarks datasets: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/time-series-and-traffic-benchmarks.md



## Key findings

- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 85 archived papers mentioned M3 / M4 / M5 competitions in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Apr 2025 (6).
- No paper of the tracked journals mentioned M3 / M4 / M5 competitions in the last 30 days (2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), M3 / M4 / M5 competitions was mentioned in 148 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (68), AI (32) and operations research (29).
- 30 of them were published in 2025, against 0 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Monash University (9), Beihang University (5) and The University of Sydney (5).
- The journals publishing most of them were International Journal of Forecasting (20), European Journal of Operational Research (8) and Expert Systems with Applications (5).
- The most-cited of them is “Recurrent Neural Networks for Time Series Forecasting: Current status and future directions” (International Journal of Forecasting, 2020), with 1,369 citations.
- Papers use M3 / M4 / M5 competitions most often with Kaggle (14), S&P 500 (8) and Facebook (5); 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 |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
|  | 28 | 30 | 27 | 85 |

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 3 | 23 | 3 | 9 | 5 | 2 | 14 | 5 | 4 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 13 | 4 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 6 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 0 | 7 | 23 | 6 | 13 | 9 | 11 | 29 | 30 | 20 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [International Journal of Forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-forecasting.md) | 20 |
| 2 | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 8 |
| 3 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 5 |
| 4 | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 4 |
| 5 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 3 |
| 6 | [Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/data-mining-and-knowledge-discovery.md) | 3 |
| 7 | [Supply Chain Analytics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/supply-chain-analytics.md) | 3 |
| 8 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 2 |
| 9 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2 |
| 10 | [International Journal of Production Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-production-economics.md) | 2 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Monash University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/monash-university.md) | 9 |
| 2 | [Beihang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beihang-university.md) | 5 |
| 3 | [The University of Sydney](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/the-university-of-sydney.md) | 5 |
| 4 | [Universidad de Granada](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/universidad-de-granada.md) | 5 |
| 5 | [KU Leuven](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/ku-leuven.md) | 4 |
| 6 | National Technical University of Athens | 4 |
| 7 | University of Skövde | 4 |
| 8 | Sorbonne Université | 3 |
| 9 | [University of Bath](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-bath.md) | 3 |
| 10 | [University of Padua](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-padua.md) | 3 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Australia | 15 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 15 |
| 3 | China | 11 |
| 4 | Spain | 10 |
| 5 | United States | 10 |
| 6 | Italy | 9 |
| 7 | Germany | 8 |
| 8 | France | 8 |
| 9 | Netherlands | 5 |
| 10 | Sweden | 5 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [time series forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/time-series-forecasting.md) | 23 |
| 2 | forecast accuracy | 11 |
| 3 | probabilistic forecasting | 11 |
| 4 | M4 competition | 10 |
| 5 | forecast reconciliation | 9 |
| 6 | forecast combination | 7 |
| 7 | hierarchical time series | 7 |
| 8 | [artificial neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/artificial-neural-networks.md) | 6 |
| 9 | demand forecasting | 6 |
| 10 | forecast coherence | 6 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,369 | 18.3 | [Recurrent Neural Networks for Time Series Forecasting: Current status and future directions](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2020.06.008) | [International Journal of Forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-forecasting.md) | 2020-08-10 | Hansika Hewamalage, Christoph Bergmeir, Kasun Bandara |
| 2 | 992 | 11.3 | [The M4 Competition: 100,000 time series and 61 forecasting methods](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2019.04.014) | [International Journal of Forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-forecasting.md) | 2019-07-19 | Spyros Makridakis, Evangelos Spiliotis, Vassilios Assimakopoulos |
| 3 | 637 | 6.3 | [The M4 Competition: Results, findings, conclusion and way forward](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.001) | [International Journal of Forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-forecasting.md) | 2018-06-20 | Spyros Makridakis, Evangelos Spiliotis, Vassilios Assimakopoulos |
| 4 | 313 | 3.7 | [FFORMA: Feature-based forecast model averaging](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2019.02.011) | [International Journal of Forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-forecasting.md) | 2019-09-27 | Pablo Montero‐Manso, George A. Athanasopoulos, Rob J. Hyndman et al. |
| 5 | 275 | 14.9 | [A comprehensive survey of deep learning for time series forecasting: architectural diversity and open challenges](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-025-11223-9) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2025-04-23 | Jongseon Kim, Hyungjoon Kim, HyunGi Kim et al. |

## Used together with

Papers use M3 / M4 / M5 competitions most often with Kaggle (14), S&P 500 (8) and Facebook (5); 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 M3 / M4 / M5 competitions together with (at least 3 papers; lift 1 = chance)*

| Used with | Type | Papers using both | Lift |
|---|---|---:|---:|
| [Kaggle](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/kaggle.md) | Dataset | 14 | 7.9 |
| [S&P 500](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/s-p-500.md) | Dataset | 8 | 1.1 |
| [Facebook](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/facebook.md) | Dataset | 5 | 0.5 |
| [ETT (electricity transformer temperature)](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/ett-electricity-transformer-temperature.md) | Dataset | 4 | 30.1 |
| [MODIS](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/modis.md) | Dataset | 4 | 3.2 |
| [Twitter / X](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/twitter-x.md) | Dataset | 4 | 0.3 |
| [Dow Jones Industrial Average](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/dow-jones-industrial-average.md) | Dataset | 3 | 3.1 |
| [Euro Stoxx / DAX](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/euro-stoxx-dax.md) | Dataset | 3 | 2.3 |
| [Eurostat](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/eurostat.md) | Dataset | 3 | 0.7 |
| [Google Trends](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/google-trends.md) | Dataset | 3 | 1.5 |
| [Marketization index (Fan Gang)](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/marketization-index-fan-gang.md) | Dataset | 3 | 1.4 |
| [Wikipedia](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/wikipedia.md) | Dataset | 3 | 0.9 |

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

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). M3 / M4 / M5 competitions. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/m3-m4-m5-competitions

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-datasets-m3-m4-m5-competitions,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {M3 / M4 / M5 competitions},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/m3-m4-m5-competitions}},
  urldate = {2026-11-04},
  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/).