---
title: "NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99: research papers using this data"
description: "From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 122 archived papers mentioned NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Jan 2025 (10)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/nsl-kdd-kdd-cup-99
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/nsl-kdd-kdd-cup-99.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 122 archived papers mentioned NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Jan 2025 (10). (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)
---

# NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99

[Browse dataset profiles](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/directory/page/5.md)

Network traffic, intrusion, fraud and anomaly records used to compare detection methods.

- data category: Cybersecurity and anomaly detection benchmarks
- 0 papers in the last 7 days
- Names searched for: NSL-KDD, KDD Cup 99, KDD99, KDDCup99, KDD Cup 1999

Most-used data: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/datasets.md · All Cybersecurity and anomaly detection benchmarks datasets: https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/cybersecurity-and-anomaly-detection-benchmarks.md



## Key findings

- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 122 archived papers mentioned NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Jan 2025 (10).
- NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 was mentioned in 1 paper in the last 30 days (2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05), ranking #165 of the 246 datasets mentioned.
- By journal category: Information Systems (1).
- Most of them appeared in Computers & Security (1).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 was mentioned in 231 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (179), information systems (43) and statistics (3).
- 52 of them were published in 2025, against 12 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation (4), Deakin University (3) and Manipal Academy of Higher Education (3).
- The journals publishing most of them were Computers & Security (24), Neural Computing and Applications (18) and Expert Systems with Applications (18).
- The most-cited of them is “A bidirectional LSTM deep learning approach for intrusion detection” (Expert Systems with Applications, 2021), with 438 citations.
- Papers use NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 most often with UNSW-NB15 (99), CIC-IDS2017 / CSE-CIC-IDS2018 (65) and IoT intrusion data (Bot-IoT, TON_IoT, CICIoT2023) (36); it has 10 partners in the code and data network, in the group around NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99, UNSW-NB15, CIC-IDS2017 /….

## 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 |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
|  | 46 | 50 | 26 | 122 |

## 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) | 11 | 2 | 11 | 9 | 15 | 18 | 17 | 35 | 43 | 18 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 12 | 5 | 15 | 10 | 20 | 24 | 28 | 45 | 52 | 20 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Computers & Security](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-security.md) | 24 |
| 2 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 18 |
| 3 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 18 |
| 4 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 17 |
| 5 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 16 |
| 6 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 9 |
| 7 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 6 |
| 8 | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 5 |
| 9 | [Information Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-sciences.md) | 4 |
| 10 | [Cognitive Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/cognitive-computation.md) | 4 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation | 4 |
| 2 | [Deakin University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/deakin-university.md) | 3 |
| 3 | Manipal Academy of Higher Education | 3 |
| 4 | SRM Institute of Science and Technology | 3 |
| 5 | University of Bari Aldo Moro | 3 |
| 6 | Ajman University | 2 |
| 7 | Assiut University | 2 |
| 8 | [City University of Hong Kong](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/city-university-of-hong-kong.md) | 2 |
| 9 | Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l'Informatica | 2 |
| 10 | [Edith Cowan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/edith-cowan-university.md) | 2 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 29 |
| 2 | India | 23 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 14 |
| 4 | United States | 14 |
| 5 | Australia | 12 |
| 6 | Egypt | 12 |
| 7 | Italy | 10 |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | 8 |
| 9 | Spain | 7 |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | 7 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | NSL-KDD dataset | 58 |
| 2 | intrusion detection | 41 |
| 3 | network intrusion detection | 32 |
| 4 | [feature selection](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/feature-selection.md) | 30 |
| 5 | UNSW-NB15 | 26 |
| 6 | [class imbalance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/class-imbalance.md) | 26 |
| 7 | Internet of Things security | 23 |
| 8 | intrusion detection systems | 22 |
| 9 | network traffic classification | 21 |
| 10 | [anomaly detection](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/anomaly-detection.md) | 20 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 438 | 6.9 | [A bidirectional LSTM deep learning approach for intrusion detection](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115524) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2021-07-16 | Yakubu Imrana, Yanping Xiang, Liaqat Ali et al. |
| 2 | 399 | 4.9 | [A feature selection algorithm for intrusion detection system based on Pigeon Inspired Optimizer](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2020.113249) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2020-01-25 | Hadeel Alazzam, Ahmad Sharieh, Khair Eddin Sabri |
| 3 | 355 | 5.5 | [A survey on intrusion detection system: feature selection, model, performance measures, application perspective, challenges, and future research directions](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-021-10037-9) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2021-07-01 | Ankit Thakkar, Ritika Lohiya |
| 4 | 346 | 4.0 | [Application of deep reinforcement learning to intrusion detection for supervised problems](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2019.112963) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2019-09-18 | Manuel López‐Martín, Belén Carro, Antonio Sánchez-Esguevillas |
| 5 | 315 | 9.7 | [Machine learning-based network intrusion detection for big and imbalanced data using oversampling, stacking feature embedding and feature extraction](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-024-00886-w) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2024-02-22 | Md. Alamin Talukder, Md. Manowarul Islam, Md. Ashraf Uddin et al. |

## Used together with

Papers use NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 most often with UNSW-NB15 (99), CIC-IDS2017 / CSE-CIC-IDS2018 (65) and IoT intrusion data (Bot-IoT, TON_IoT, CICIoT2023) (36); it has 10 partners in the code and data network, in the group around NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99, UNSW-NB15, CIC-IDS2017 /….

*What papers use NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 together with (at least 3 papers; lift 1 = chance)*

| Used with | Type | Papers using both | Lift |
|---|---|---:|---:|
| [UNSW-NB15](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/unsw-nb15.md) | Dataset | 99 | 128.4 |
| [CIC-IDS2017 / CSE-CIC-IDS2018](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/cic-ids2017-cse-cic-ids2018.md) | Dataset | 65 | 95.1 |
| [IoT intrusion data (Bot-IoT, TON_IoT, CICIoT2023)](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/iot-intrusion-data-bot-iot-ton-iot-ciciot2023.md) | Dataset | 36 | 72.8 |
| [UCI Machine Learning Repository](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/uci-machine-learning-repository.md) | Dataset | 14 | 4.6 |
| [CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/cifar-10-cifar-100.md) | Dataset | 13 | 1.9 |
| [Kaggle](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/kaggle.md) | Dataset | 10 | 3.6 |
| [MNIST / Fashion-MNIST](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/mnist-fashion-mnist.md) | Dataset | 10 | 1.9 |
| [ImageNet](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/imagenet.md) | Dataset | 6 | 0.5 |
| [CEC benchmark functions](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/cec-benchmark-functions.md) | Dataset | 5 | 1.6 |
| [MODIS](https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/modis.md) | Dataset | 4 | 2.0 |

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

## Papers

*Papers mentioning NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99 in the last 30 days, newest first.*

| Date | Title | Journal | Authors | Affiliations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-24 | [How evaluation protocol choices inflate intrusion detection accuracy: A three-dataset systematic study](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2026.105218) | [Computers & Security](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-security.md) | Mohammed BERHILI, Omar Chaieb, Mohammed Benabdellah | Mohamed I University |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/nsl-kdd-kdd-cup-99

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-datasets-nsl-kdd-kdd-cup-99,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {NSL-KDD / KDD Cup 99},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/nsl-kdd-kdd-cup-99}},
  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/).