---
title: "Do multi-criteria rankings agree? (research idea)"
description: "Supplier selection is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the operations research journals, and much of it relies on multi-criteria methods such as AHP, TOPSIS and the best-worst method. These methods can rank the same options differently. How often would a paper's conclusion change with the method, and what should a robustness check look like?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/do-multi-criteria-rankings-agree
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/do-multi-criteria-rankings-agree.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Research idea: Do multi-criteria rankings agree?"
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["operations research", "methods"]
keywords: ["supplier selection", "TOPSIS", "multi-criteria decision making"]
---

# Do multi-criteria rankings agree?

Supplier selection is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the operations research journals, and much of it relies on multi-criteria methods such as AHP, TOPSIS and the best-worst method. These methods can rank the same options differently. How often would a paper's conclusion change with the method, and what should a robustness check look like?

## What prompted this

In the operations research journals, "supplier selection" had 11 papers in July–September 2026 against about 4 expected (see the [operations research dashboard](/categories/operations-research)). Since October 2025, 227 papers carry a multi-criteria keyword such as TOPSIS, AHP or the best-worst method (112 in AI journals, 74 in operations research). Only 15 of them carry a rank-reversal, sensitivity-analysis, robustness or comparative-analysis keyword. The formulas of these methods are on the [equation ranking](/rankings/equations)'s list.

## Questions

- In published case studies, how often does the top choice change when the weighting method, the normalization or the aggregation changes?
- How sensitive are the rankings to small changes in expert judgments?
- Would reporting the share of method variants that agree on the winner be a useful standard?

## Possible approach

Re-run the decision matrices reported in recent papers through a grid of method variants, and record how often the top choice and the full ranking agree.

## Next step

Collect the decision matrices of 20 recent supplier-selection papers and re-rank each one with TOPSIS, VIKOR and the best-worst method.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| supplier selection | 6 | #306 | 2, 5, 8, 6, 5, 4, 4, 7, 4, 10, 3, 2, 2, 1, 6, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 4, 2, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 4, 3, 7, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 5, 5 | 137 |
| TOPSIS | 1 | #2881 | 5, 4, 7, 6, 3, 3, 6, 3, 3, 3, 2, 5, 2, 4, 5, 3, 3, 5, 3, 6, 2, 3, 4, 6, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3, 4, 2, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 1 | 145 |
| multi-criteria decision making | 3 | #776 | 30, 23, 17, 15, 11, 25, 15, 23, 13, 16, 16, 13, 13, 14, 21, 17, 12, 14, 16, 22, 11, 14, 14, 12, 19, 13, 6, 10, 18, 16, 8, 19, 24, 10, 10, 10, 2 | 560 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Do multi-criteria rankings agree?. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/do-multi-criteria-rankings-agree

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-do-multi-criteria-rankings-agree,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Do multi-criteria rankings agree?},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/do-multi-criteria-rankings-agree}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  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/).