---
title: "National Research Foundation of Korea"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), National Research Foundation of Korea was named as a funder of 3,912 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,427), economics (589) and operations research (461). It ranks #11 among the funders of the tracked journals' papers from 2023 to 2025."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-research-foundation-of-korea
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-research-foundation-of-korea.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), National Research Foundation of Korea was named as a funder of 3,912 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,427), economics (589) and operations research (461). (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 Research Foundation of Korea

Papers in the tracked journals that name National Research Foundation of Korea 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 Research Foundation of Korea was named as a funder of 3,912 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,427), economics (589) and operations research (461).
- It ranks #11 among the funders of the tracked journals' papers from 2023 to 2025.
- 535 of them were published in 2025, against 236 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Seoul National University (240), Korea University (214) and Yonsei University (172).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (252), Knowledge-Based Systems (89) and Pattern Recognition (75).
- The most-cited of them is “ProtTrans: Toward Understanding the Language of Life Through Self-Supervised Learning” (IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2021), with 2,325 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) | 52 | 63 | 90 | 118 | 139 | 176 | 192 | 211 | 228 | 158 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 58 | 47 | 63 | 46 | 65 | 52 | 49 | 64 | 72 | 73 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 31 | 40 | 39 | 44 | 48 | 47 | 38 | 49 | 69 | 56 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 12 | 28 | 27 | 37 | 43 | 43 | 44 | 57 | 55 | 53 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 22 | 41 | 21 | 35 | 39 | 26 | 25 | 43 | 42 | 27 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 29 | 31 | 27 | 26 | 42 | 29 | 19 | 20 | 20 | 23 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 17 | 16 | 19 | 17 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 19 | 17 | 11 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 2 | 7 | 6 | 14 | 14 | 12 | 10 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 10 | 8 | 6 | 14 | 18 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 9 | 13 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 1 | 3 | 8 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 10 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 2 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| All categories | 236 | 284 | 309 | 358 | 436 | 412 | 408 | 487 | 535 | 447 |

## 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) | 252 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 89 |
| 3 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 75 |
| 4 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 65 |
| 5 | [IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-fuzzy-systems.md) | 59 |
| 6 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 53 |
| 7 | [Journal of the Korean Statistical Society](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-the-korean-statistical-society.md) | 49 |
| 8 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 48 |
| 9 | [Technological Forecasting and Social Change](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change.md) | 35 |
| 10 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 29 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Seoul National University | 240 |
| 2 | Korea University | 214 |
| 3 | Yonsei University | 172 |
| 4 | Sungkyunkwan University | 156 |
| 5 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology | 150 |
| 6 | Pusan National University | 131 |
| 7 | Hanyang University | 120 |
| 8 | Kyung Hee University | 81 |
| 9 | Ajou University | 69 |
| 10 | Sejong University | 64 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | South Korea | 1,812 |
| 2 | United States | 255 |
| 3 | China | 192 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 61 |
| 5 | Hong Kong | 44 |
| 6 | Vietnam | 42 |
| 7 | Oman | 41 |
| 8 | Australia | 39 |
| 9 | Pakistan | 29 |
| 10 | India | 27 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | South Korea | 71 |
| 2 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 60 |
| 3 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 54 |
| 4 | data augmentation | 27 |
| 5 | [explainable AI](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/explainable-ai.md) | 27 |
| 6 | interpretability | 27 |
| 7 | convolutional neural networks | 24 |
| 8 | computational efficiency | 23 |
| 9 | feature selection | 23 |
| 10 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 23 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,325 | 36.4 | [ProtTrans: Toward Understanding the Language of Life Through Self-Supervised Learning](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3095381) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-07-07 | Ahmed Elnaggar, Michael Heinzinger, Christian Dallago et al. |
| 2 | 1,759 | 41.4 | [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): What we know and what is left to attain Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2023.101805) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2023-04-18 | Sajid Ali, Tamer Abuhmed, Shaker El–Sappagh et al. |
| 3 | 1,003 | 10.5 | [Chatbot e-service and customer satisfaction regarding luxury brands](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.10.004) | [Journal of Business Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-research.md) | 2018-11-10 | Minjee Chung, Eunju Ko, Heerim Joung et al. |
| 4 | 979 | 11.6 | [A Survey on Data Collection for Machine Learning: A Big Data - AI Integration Perspective](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2019.2946162) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2019-10-08 | Yuji Roh, Geon Heo, Steven Euijong Whang |
| 5 | 911 | 13.2 | [Knowledge Distillation and Student-Teacher Learning for Visual Intelligence: A Review and New Outlooks](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3055564) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-01-29 | Lin Wang, Kuk-Jin Yoon |
| 6 | 822 | 10.8 | [A smart healthcare monitoring system for heart disease prediction based on ensemble deep learning and feature fusion](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2020.06.008) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2020-06-26 | Farman Ali, Shaker El–Sappagh, S. M. Riazul Islam et al. |
| 7 | 787 | 7.6 | [Forecasting the volatility of stock price index: A hybrid model integrating LSTM with multiple GARCH-type models](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2018.03.002) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2018-03-05 | Ha Young Kim, Chang Hyun Won |
| 8 | 717 | 9.5 | [Sensor-based and vision-based human activity recognition: A comprehensive survey](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2020.107561) | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 2020-07-22 | L. Minh Dang, Kyungbok Min, Hanxiang Wang et al. |
| 9 | 646 | 7.8 | [Technology acceptance theories and factors influencing artificial Intelligence-based intelligent products](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2019.101324) | [Telematics and Informatics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/telematics-and-informatics.md) | 2019-12-16 | Kwonsang Sohn, Ohbyung Kwon |
| 10 | 642 | 14.1 | [A Comprehensive Survey of Image Augmentation Techniques for Deep Learning](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2023.109347) | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 2023-01-18 | Mingle Xu, Sook Yoon, Alvaro Fuentes et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). National Research Foundation of Korea. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-research-foundation-of-korea

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-funders-national-research-foundation-of-korea,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {National Research Foundation of Korea},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/funders/national-research-foundation-of-korea}},
  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/).