---
title: "National Key Research and Development Program of China"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), National Key Research and Development Program of China was named as a funder of 7,916 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (6,357), operations research (784) and economics (386). It ranks #3 among the funders of the tracked journals' papers from 2023 to 2025."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-key-research-and-development-program-of-china
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-key-research-and-development-program-of-china.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), National Key Research and Development Program of China was named as a funder of 7,916 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (6,357), operations research (784) and economics (386). (as of 2026-10-31)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-10-31T17:45:59+09:00
window: 2026-10-02 to 2026-10-31
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# National Key Research and Development Program of China

Papers in the tracked journals that name National Key Research and Development Program of China as a funder. Funders are the organisations OpenAlex links to a paper from its funding information (Crossref metadata and the paper's acknowledgements); a paper counts once for each funder it names. Grant numbers are not shown.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/funders.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), National Key Research and Development Program of China was named as a funder of 7,916 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (6,357), operations research (784) and economics (386).
- It ranks #3 among the funders of the tracked journals' papers from 2023 to 2025.
- 1,644 of them were published in 2025, against 129 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (415), Tsinghua University (247) and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (244).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (930), Pattern Recognition (502) and Knowledge-Based Systems (498).
- The most-cited of them is “Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks” (IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2019), with 12,153 citations.

## 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) | 94 | 170 | 293 | 437 | 569 | 745 | 923 | 953 | 1,354 | 819 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 9 | 15 | 33 | 56 | 101 | 79 | 105 | 101 | 153 | 132 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 20 | 21 | 38 | 61 | 44 | 37 | 34 | 35 | 45 | 51 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 12 | 19 | 18 | 32 | 29 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 15 | 18 | 24 | 14 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 1 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 11 | 11 | 3 | 11 | 18 | 10 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 2 | 3 | 9 | 12 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 5 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 129 | 219 | 379 | 573 | 751 | 902 | 1,112 | 1,143 | 1,644 | 1,064 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 930 |
| 2 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 502 |
| 3 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 498 |
| 4 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 472 |
| 5 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 383 |
| 6 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 368 |
| 7 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 294 |
| 8 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 113 |
| 9 | [Information Processing & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-processing-management.md) | 99 |
| 10 | [Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-c-emerging-technologies.md) | 97 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 415 |
| 2 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 247 |
| 3 | [University of Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 244 |
| 4 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 191 |
| 5 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 179 |
| 6 | [Beihang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beihang-university.md) | 176 |
| 7 | [Tongji University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tongji-university.md) | 157 |
| 8 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 155 |
| 9 | Northwestern Polytechnical University | 150 |
| 10 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 149 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 4,896 |
| 2 | United States | 337 |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 298 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 188 |
| 5 | Australia | 179 |
| 6 | Singapore | 177 |
| 7 | Macao | 81 |
| 8 | Canada | 74 |
| 9 | Japan | 57 |
| 10 | France | 44 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 179 |
| 2 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 162 |
| 3 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 160 |
| 4 | attention mechanism | 127 |
| 5 | [multimodal fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multimodal-fusion.md) | 98 |
| 6 | graph convolutional networks | 93 |
| 7 | [knowledge distillation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/knowledge-distillation.md) | 86 |
| 8 | interpretability | 84 |
| 9 | self-supervised learning | 82 |
| 10 | multi-task learning | 77 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12,153 | 135.1 | [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2019.2913372) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2019-05-02 | Jie Hu, Li Shen, Samuel Albanie et al. |
| 2 | 5,543 | 59.6 | [Object Detection With Deep Learning: A Review](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2018.2876865) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2019-01-28 | Zhong‐Qiu Zhao, Peng Zheng, Shou-Tao Xu et al. |
| 3 | 2,626 | 24.0 | [Knowledge Graph Embedding: A Survey of Approaches and Applications](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2017.2754499) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2017-09-20 | Quan Wang, Zhendong Mao, Bin Wang et al. |
| 4 | 1,833 | 20.5 | [NTU RGB+D 120: A Large-Scale Benchmark for 3D Human Activity Understanding](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2019.2916873) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2019-05-14 | Jun Liu, Amir Shahroudy, Mauricio Pérez et al. |
| 5 | 1,808 | 21.8 | [GOT-10k: A Large High-Diversity Benchmark for Generic Object Tracking in the Wild](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2019.2957464) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2019-12-04 | Lianghua Huang, Xin Zhao, Kaiqi Huang |
| 6 | 1,659 | 20.9 | [Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2020.2981333) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2020-03-17 | Ziwei Zhang, Peng Cui, Wenwu Zhu |
| 7 | 1,359 | 24.7 | [Towards Personalized Federated Learning](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2022.3160699) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2022-03-28 | Alysa Ziying Tan, Han Yu, Lizhen Cui et al. |
| 8 | 1,331 | 22.0 | [Detection and Tracking Meet Drones Challenge](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3119563) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-10-15 | Pengfei Zhu, Longyin Wen, Dawei Du et al. |
| 9 | 1,253 | 16.1 | [Deep Subdomain Adaptation Network for Image Classification](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2020.2988928) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2020-05-04 | Yongchun Zhu, Fuzhen Zhuang, Jindong Wang et al. |
| 10 | 1,208 | 11.9 | [Heterogeneous Information Network Embedding for Recommendation](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2018.2833443) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2018-05-07 | Chuan Shi, Binbin Hu, Wayne Xin Zhao et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). National Key Research and Development Program of China. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-key-research-and-development-program-of-china

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-funders-national-key-research-and-development-program-of-china,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {National Key Research and Development Program of China},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-key-research-and-development-program-of-china}},
  urldate = {2026-10-31},
  note = {Journal 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/).