KU Leuven
← Top universities and research institutions
Key findings#
- KU Leuven was involved in 7 papers in the last 30 days (2026-10-04 to 2026-11-02), ranking #165 of 3,191 institutions.
- Most of them appeared in Scientometrics (1), Discrete Optimization (1) and Omega (1).
- Countries: Belgium (7), China (2) and United Kingdom (2).
- From 2023 to 2025, KU Leuven ranks #9 in statistics.
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), authors at KU Leuven took part in 2,060 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (501), operations research (424) and AI (284).
- 224 of them were published in 2025, against 217 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were University of Antwerp (64), Ghent University (35) and Maastricht University (34).
- The journals publishing most of them were European Journal of Operational Research (54), Scientometrics (27) and Expert Systems with Applications (22).
- The most-cited of them is “CasADi: a software framework for nonlinear optimization and optimal control” (Mathematical Programming Computation, 2018), with 3,895 citations.
- Across everything OpenAlex indexes, KU Leuven has 307,927 works with 31,994,483 citations (h-index 1,362).
- The tracked journals hold 1,892 of its 129,534 works in OpenAlex from 2017 to 2025 (1.5%).
- Its main research topics in OpenAlex are Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies (5,304), Semiconductor materials and devices (3,583) and Astronomy and Astrophysical Research (3,059).
In the rankings#
Top institutions, 2023–2025: #9 in statistics
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economics | 57 | 57 | 56 | 55 | 52 | 50 | 52 | 36 | 47 | 39 |
| Operations Research | 40 | 44 | 35 | 35 | 48 | 45 | 36 | 47 | 55 | 39 |
| AI | 26 | 22 | 13 | 20 | 32 | 32 | 29 | 54 | 38 | 18 |
| Management | 21 | 16 | 13 | 11 | 19 | 22 | 18 | 22 | 17 | 17 |
| Higher Education and Research | 23 | 15 | 12 | 19 | 9 | 25 | 11 | 10 | 16 | 18 |
| Finance | 13 | 9 | 18 | 12 | 19 | 13 | 22 | 15 | 21 | 14 |
| Statistics | 9 | 12 | 8 | 6 | 11 | 13 | 10 | 17 | 10 | 4 |
| Marketing | 8 | 6 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 6 | 11 | 10 | 7 | 7 |
| Information Systems | 10 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 7 | 11 | 2 | 5 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 4 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| Accounting | 3 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| All categories | 217 | 194 | 183 | 179 | 224 | 227 | 209 | 235 | 224 | 168 |
Where the papers come from and its co-authors#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | European Journal of Operational Research | 54 |
| 2 | Scientometrics | 27 |
| 3 | Expert Systems with Applications | 22 |
| 4 | Machine Learning | 14 |
| 5 | Computers & Operations Research | 13 |
| 6 | AI & Society | 13 |
| 7 | Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery | 13 |
| 8 | Journal of Financial Stability | 13 |
| 9 | Journal of Retailing | 12 |
| 10 | Annals of Operations Research | 12 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Antwerp | 64 |
| 2 | Ghent University | 35 |
| 3 | Maastricht University | 34 |
| 4 | University of Zurich | 34 |
| 5 | Swiss Finance Institute | 33 |
| 6 | UCLouvain | 32 |
| 7 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique | 31 |
| 8 | Centre for Economic Policy Research | 30 |
| 9 | Vlerick Business School | 28 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belgium | 836 |
| 2 | Netherlands | 132 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 126 |
| 4 | China | 112 |
| 5 | Germany | 102 |
| 6 | United States | 86 |
| 7 | France | 82 |
| 8 | Switzerland | 67 |
| 9 | Italy | 65 |
| 10 | Spain | 25 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | COVID-19 pandemic | 16 |
| 2 | multinational corporations | 13 |
| 3 | explainable AI | 11 |
| 4 | mixed-integer linear programming | 10 |
| 5 | Flanders | 9 |
| 6 | cross-national comparison | 9 |
| 7 | large language models | 9 |
| 8 | resource-constrained project scheduling | 9 |
| 9 | firm performance | 8 |
| 10 | vehicle routing | 8 |
Most-cited papers#
In OpenAlex#
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | University |
| Location | Leuven, Flanders, Belgium |
| Also known as | KUL, Catholic University of Leuven, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, University of Leuven |
| Units listed in OpenAlex | 5 |
| Works in OpenAlex | 307,927 |
| Citations | 31,994,483 |
| h-index | 1,362 |
| i10-index | 401,526 |
| 2-year mean citedness | 4.77 |
| Website | www.kuleuven.be |
| ROR | ror.org/05f950310 |
| OpenAlex | openalex.org/I99464096 |
| # | Topic | Field | Works |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies | Physics and Astronomy | 5,304 |
| 2 | Semiconductor materials and devices | Engineering | 3,583 |
| 3 | Astronomy and Astrophysical Research | Physics and Astronomy | 3,059 |
| 4 | Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics | Physics and Astronomy | 2,972 |
| 5 | HIV/AIDS drug development and treatment | Medicine | 2,401 |
| Year | Works in OpenAlex | Citations received | In the tracked journals | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (so far) | 13,814 | 692,234 | 168 | 1.2% |
| 2025 | 16,149 | 872,242 | 224 | 1.4% |
| 2024 | 16,337 | 874,748 | 235 | 1.4% |
| 2023 | 15,524 | 832,235 | 209 | 1.3% |
| 2022 | 14,990 | 812,010 | 227 | 1.5% |
| 2021 | 14,758 | 811,486 | 224 | 1.5% |
| 2020 | 13,999 | 703,605 | 179 | 1.3% |
| 2019 | 12,904 | 586,501 | 183 | 1.4% |
| 2018 | 12,949 | 523,127 | 194 | 1.5% |
| 2017 | 11,924 | 470,372 | 217 | 1.8% |
| Date | Title | Journal | Authors | Affiliations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | Do awards make scholars shine brighter? The halo effect on research career in Taiwan | Scientometrics | Chien Hsiang Liao, Pei‐Shan Chi | Fu Jen Catholic University; KU Leuven |
| 2026-10-29 | Robust deterministic policies for Markov decision processes under budgeted uncertainty | Discrete Optimization | Fei Wu, Erik L. Demeulemeester, Jannik Matuschke | Tsinghua University; KU Leuven |
| 2026-10-13 | A geospatial decomposition method for huge-scale maximum covering facility location problems | Omega | Valentijn Stienen, Britt W.J.R. van Veggel, Dick den Hertog et al. | Tilburg University; KU Leuven; University of Amsterdam |
| 2026-10-13 | The Effects of Hype and Social Preferences on Crypto Investing | Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization | Hans Degryse, Alberta Di Giuli, Naciye Sekerci et al. | Centre for Economic Policy Research; KU Leuven |
| 2026-10-10 | Nested orthogonal arrays for sequential experimentation | Statistics & Probability Letters | Eric D. Schoen, Max D. Morris | KU Leuven; Iowa State University |
| 2026-10-10 | Stakeholder attention to advanced air mobility reveals worldwide disparities | Transport Policy | Justin Hayse Chiwing G. Tang, Yuan Li, Enyuan Cao et al. | Hong Kong Polytechnic University; TU Dortmund University; Vrije Universiteit Brussel; … |
| 2026-10-07 | Pessimistic bilevel optimization approach for decision–focused learning | Mathematical Programming Computation | Diego Jiménez, Bernardo K. Pagnoncelli, Hande Yaman | SKEMA Business School; Université Côte d'Azur; KU Leuven |
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). KU Leuven. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/ku-leuven
@misc{scholar4ai-institutions-ku-leuven,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {KU Leuven},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/ku-leuven}},
urldate = {2026-11-02},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}