---
title: "KU Leuven: research profile, papers and co-authors"
description: "Research profile of KU Leuven: 2,060 papers in 400 tracked journals since 2017, mostly economics and operations research; h-index 1,362."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/ku-leuven
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/ku-leuven.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Research profile of KU Leuven: 2,060 papers in 400 tracked journals since 2017, mostly economics and operations research; h-index 1,362. (as of 2026-11-02)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-02T12:20:52+09:00
window: 2026-10-04 to 2026-11-02
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# KU Leuven

- 2 papers in the last 7 days
- country: Belgium
- web domain: kuleuven.be

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

## 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](https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/institutions-by-year/statistics.md)

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 57 | 57 | 56 | 55 | 52 | 50 | 52 | 36 | 47 | 39 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 40 | 44 | 35 | 35 | 48 | 45 | 36 | 47 | 55 | 39 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 26 | 22 | 13 | 20 | 32 | 32 | 29 | 54 | 38 | 18 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 21 | 16 | 13 | 11 | 19 | 22 | 18 | 22 | 17 | 17 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 23 | 15 | 12 | 19 | 9 | 25 | 11 | 10 | 16 | 18 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 13 | 9 | 18 | 12 | 19 | 13 | 22 | 15 | 21 | 14 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 9 | 12 | 8 | 6 | 11 | 13 | 10 | 17 | 10 | 4 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 8 | 6 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 6 | 11 | 10 | 7 | 7 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 10 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 7 | 11 | 2 | 5 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 4 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 3 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 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

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 54 |
| 2 | [Scientometrics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/scientometrics.md) | 27 |
| 3 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 22 |
| 4 | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 14 |
| 5 | [Computers & Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-operations-research.md) | 13 |
| 6 | [AI & Society](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ai-society.md) | 13 |
| 7 | [Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/data-mining-and-knowledge-discovery.md) | 13 |
| 8 | [Journal of Financial Stability](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-financial-stability.md) | 13 |
| 9 | [Journal of Retailing](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-retailing.md) | 12 |
| 10 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 12 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | 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](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 31 |
| 8 | [Centre for Economic Policy Research](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-for-economic-policy-research.md) | 30 |
| 9 | Vlerick Business School | 28 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | 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 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 16 |
| 2 | multinational corporations | 13 |
| 3 | [explainable AI](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/explainable-ai.md) | 11 |
| 4 | [mixed-integer linear programming](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mixed-integer-linear-programming.md) | 10 |
| 5 | Flanders | 9 |
| 6 | cross-national comparison | 9 |
| 7 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 9 |
| 8 | resource-constrained project scheduling | 9 |
| 9 | firm performance | 8 |
| 10 | vehicle routing | 8 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3,895 | 39.1 | [CasADi: a software framework for nonlinear optimization and optimal control](https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-018-0139-4) | [Mathematical Programming Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/mathematical-programming-computation.md) | 2018-07-11 | Joel A.E. Andersson, Joris Gillis, Greg Horn et al. |
| 2 | 1,646 | 23.5 | [A continual learning survey: Defying forgetting in classification tasks](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3057446) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-01-01 | Matthias Delange, Rahaf Aljundi, Marc Masana et al. |
| 3 | 1,356 | 13.1 | [Semantic Foggy Scene Understanding with Synthetic Data](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-018-1072-8) | [International Journal of Computer Vision](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-computer-vision.md) | 2018-03-23 | Christos Sakaridis, Dengxin Dai, Luc Van Gool |
| 4 | 846 | 12.1 | [Multi-Task Learning for Dense Prediction Tasks: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3054719) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-01-01 | Simon Vandenhende, Stamatios Georgoulis, Wouter Van Gansbeke et al. |
| 5 | 665 | 14.2 | [Three types of incremental learning](https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00568-3) | [Nature Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/nature-machine-intelligence.md) | 2022-12-05 | Gido M. van de Ven, Tinne Tuytelaars, Andreas Savas Tolias |
| 6 | 637 | 8.1 | [Learning from positive and unlabeled data: a survey](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10994-020-05877-5) | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 2020-04-01 | Jessa Bekker, Jesse Davis |
| 7 | 570 | 7.0 | [Transductive LSTM for time-series prediction: An application to weather forecasting](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2019.12.030) | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 2020-01-08 | Zahra Karevan, Johan A. K. Suykens |
| 8 | 545 | 4.9 | [Bias against novelty in science: A cautionary tale for users of bibliometric indicators](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.06.006) | [Research Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/research-policy.md) | 2017-07-20 | Jian Wang, Reinhilde Veugelers, Paula E. Stephan |
| 9 | 501 | 5.0 | [DeepIGeoS: A Deep Interactive Geodesic Framework for Medical Image Segmentation](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2018.2840695) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2018-06-01 | Guotai Wang, María A. Zuluaga, Wenqi Li et al. |
| 10 | 501 | 8.2 | [acados—a modular open-source framework for fast embedded optimal control](https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-021-00208-8) | [Mathematical Programming Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/mathematical-programming-computation.md) | 2021-10-09 | Robin Verschueren, Gianluca Frison, Dimitris Kouzoupis et al. |

## In OpenAlex

*KU Leuven 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](https://www.kuleuven.be) |
| ROR | [ror.org/05f950310](https://ror.org/05f950310) |
| OpenAlex | [openalex.org/I99464096](https://openalex.org/I99464096) |

*Works and citations per year in OpenAlex, and its papers in the tracked journals*

| 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% |

*Main research topics (OpenAlex, all works)*

| # | 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 |

From OpenAlex's own record of the institution (CC0), read again monthly. Works and citations count everything OpenAlex indexes, not only the tracked journals; topics are OpenAlex's classification of those works.

*Papers, newest first.*

| Date | Title | Journal | Authors | Affiliations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | [Do awards make scholars shine brighter? The halo effect on research career in Taiwan](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-026-05877-7) | [Scientometrics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/scientometrics.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.disopt.2026.100973) | [Discrete Optimization](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/discrete-optimization.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2026.103678) | [Omega](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/omega.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2026.107797) | [Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-economic-behavior-organization.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spl.2026.110990) | [Statistics & Probability Letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/statistics-probability-letters.md) | Eric D. Schoen, Max D. Morris | KU Leuven; Iowa State University |
| 2026-10-10 | [Stakeholder attention to advanced air mobility reveals worldwide disparities](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2026.104488) | [Transport Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transport-policy.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-026-00344-z) | [Mathematical Programming Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/mathematical-programming-computation.md) | 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

```bibtex
@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}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).