---
title: "National Natural Science Foundation of China"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), National Natural Science Foundation of China was named as a funder of 77,034 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (40,300), operations research (12,475) and economics (8,521). It ranks #1 among the funders of the tracked journals' papers from 2023 to 2025."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-natural-science-foundation-of-china
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-natural-science-foundation-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 Natural Science Foundation of China was named as a funder of 77,034 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (40,300), operations research (12,475) and economics (8,521). (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 Natural Science Foundation of China

Papers in the tracked journals that name National Natural Science Foundation 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 Natural Science Foundation of China was named as a funder of 77,034 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (40,300), operations research (12,475) and economics (8,521).
- It ranks #1 among the funders of the tracked journals' papers from 2023 to 2025.
- 14,403 of them were published in 2025, against 3,002 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (1,885), Tsinghua University (1,394) and Sun Yat-sen University (1,209).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (5,375), Pattern Recognition (3,077) and Knowledge-Based Systems (2,642).
- 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) | 1,240 | 1,599 | 1,944 | 2,619 | 3,174 | 4,166 | 4,728 | 5,787 | 8,278 | 6,765 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 709 | 901 | 982 | 1,096 | 1,108 | 1,216 | 1,193 | 1,508 | 1,996 | 1,766 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 409 | 545 | 677 | 811 | 785 | 767 | 900 | 1,081 | 1,384 | 1,162 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 118 | 242 | 294 | 412 | 462 | 616 | 717 | 965 | 1,132 | 735 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 166 | 180 | 218 | 205 | 362 | 290 | 330 | 382 | 473 | 476 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 175 | 185 | 170 | 185 | 172 | 151 | 168 | 195 | 245 | 218 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 69 | 123 | 157 | 154 | 143 | 179 | 187 | 217 | 329 | 272 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 29 | 49 | 82 | 107 | 122 | 111 | 112 | 166 | 237 | 185 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 55 | 58 | 58 | 81 | 90 | 87 | 71 | 101 | 101 | 116 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 11 | 21 | 51 | 54 | 69 | 58 | 56 | 115 | 127 | 124 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 19 | 16 | 20 | 30 | 31 | 47 | 34 | 61 | 60 | 71 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 2 | 4 | 7 | 8 | 12 | 14 | 22 | 35 | 41 | 31 |
| All categories | 3,002 | 3,923 | 4,660 | 5,762 | 6,530 | 7,702 | 8,518 | 10,613 | 14,403 | 11,921 |

## 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) | 5,375 |
| 2 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 3,077 |
| 3 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 2,642 |
| 4 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 2,065 |
| 5 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 1,987 |
| 6 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 1,621 |
| 7 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 1,539 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 1,228 |
| 9 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 1,167 |
| 10 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 985 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 1,885 |
| 2 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 1,394 |
| 3 | [Sun Yat-sen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sun-yat-sen-university.md) | 1,209 |
| 4 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 1,183 |
| 5 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 1,181 |
| 6 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 1,177 |
| 7 | [University of Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 1,158 |
| 8 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 1,136 |
| 9 | [Beihang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beihang-university.md) | 1,090 |
| 10 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 1,072 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 44,565 |
| 2 | United States | 3,349 |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 2,959 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 2,261 |
| 5 | Australia | 1,766 |
| 6 | Singapore | 1,235 |
| 7 | Canada | 898 |
| 8 | Macao | 768 |
| 9 | France | 422 |
| 10 | Japan | 387 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 2,132 |
| 2 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 1,027 |
| 3 | [Chinese listed companies](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/chinese-listed-companies.md) | 967 |
| 4 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 966 |
| 5 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 928 |
| 6 | attention mechanism | 742 |
| 7 | [multimodal fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multimodal-fusion.md) | 599 |
| 8 | [financial constraints](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/financial-constraints.md) | 563 |
| 9 | state-owned enterprises | 561 |
| 10 | [class imbalance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/class-imbalance.md) | 522 |

## 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 | 5,262 | 81.3 | [A Survey of Convolutional Neural Networks: Analysis, Applications, and Prospects](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2021.3084827) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2021-06-10 | Zewen Li, Fan Liu, Wenjie Yang et al. |
| 4 | 3,404 | 39.6 | [Res2Net: A New Multi-Scale Backbone Architecture](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2019.2938758) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2019-08-30 | Shanghua Gao, Ming‐Ming Cheng, Kai Zhao et al. |
| 5 | 2,963 | 35.3 | [Deep Learning for Generic Object Detection: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-019-01247-4) | [International Journal of Computer Vision](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-computer-vision.md) | 2019-10-31 | Li Liu, Wanli Ouyang, Xiaogang Wang et al. |
| 6 | 2,904 | 43.3 | [A Survey on Multi-Task Learning](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2021.3070203) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2021-03-31 | Yu Zhang, Qiang Yang |
| 7 | 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. |
| 8 | 2,413 | 31.7 | [Deep Learning for 3D Point Clouds: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2020.3005434) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2020-06-29 | Yulan Guo, Hanyun Wang, Qingyong Hu et al. |
| 9 | 2,350 | 29.9 | [Financial markets under the global pandemic of COVID-19](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101528) | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 2020-04-16 | Dayong Zhang, Min Hu, Qiang Ji |
| 10 | 2,308 | 30.7 | [U2Fusion: A Unified Unsupervised Image Fusion Network](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2020.3012548) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2020-07-28 | Han Xu, Jiayi Ma, Junjun Jiang et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). National Natural Science Foundation of China. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-natural-science-foundation-of-china

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-funders-national-natural-science-foundation-of-china,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {National Natural Science Foundation of China},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-natural-science-foundation-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/).