---
title: "Big data research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “big data” appeared in 1,427 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (428), management (195) and operations research (163)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/big-data
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/big-data.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “big data” appeared in 1,427 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (428), management (195) and operations research (163). (as of 2026-11-04)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-04T00:03:46+09:00
window: 2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “big data”

Research on “big data” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

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

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “big data” appeared in 1,427 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (428), management (195) and operations research (163).
- 111 of them were published in 2025, against 121 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Nankai University (10), Chongqing University (7) and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (7).
- The journals publishing most of them were Journal Of Big Data (26), Expert Systems with Applications (21) and Statistics and Computing (19).
- The most-cited of them is “Siri, Siri, in my hand: Who’s the fairest in the land? On the interpretations, illustrations, and implications of artificial intelligence” (Business Horizons, 2018), with 3,134 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) | 39 | 54 | 63 | 55 | 50 | 50 | 43 | 33 | 30 | 11 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 12 | 20 | 20 | 26 | 37 | 20 | 19 | 20 | 11 | 10 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 22 | 21 | 16 | 13 | 22 | 16 | 16 | 15 | 16 | 6 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 7 | 20 | 17 | 20 | 19 | 14 | 12 | 18 | 16 | 13 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 5 | 34 | 7 | 14 | 12 | 16 | 19 | 20 | 12 | 9 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 19 | 23 | 24 | 16 | 16 | 15 | 10 | 13 | 5 | 2 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 10 | 15 | 7 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 3 | 5 | 12 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 5 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 6 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 1 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 121 | 193 | 173 | 168 | 173 | 154 | 134 | 137 | 111 | 63 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 26 |
| 2 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 21 |
| 3 | [Statistics and Computing](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/statistics-and-computing.md) | 19 |
| 4 | [Technological Forecasting and Social Change](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change.md) | 15 |
| 5 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 11 |
| 6 | [Statistical Papers](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/statistical-papers.md) | 11 |
| 7 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 8 |
| 8 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 8 |
| 9 | [Computational Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computational-statistics.md) | 8 |
| 10 | [AI & Society](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ai-society.md) | 8 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Nankai University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nankai-university.md) | 10 |
| 2 | [Chongqing University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chongqing-university.md) | 7 |
| 3 | [Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanjing-university-of-aeronautics-and-astronautics.md) | 7 |
| 4 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 6 |
| 5 | [East China Normal University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/east-china-normal-university.md) | 6 |
| 6 | [Shanghai University of International Business and Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-university-of-international-business-and-economics.md) | 6 |
| 7 | [South China University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/south-china-university-of-technology.md) | 6 |
| 8 | [University of Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 6 |
| 9 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 6 |
| 10 | [Capital University of Economics and Business](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/capital-university-of-economics-and-business.md) | 5 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 166 |
| 2 | United States | 73 |
| 3 | Italy | 41 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 37 |
| 5 | India | 26 |
| 6 | France | 24 |
| 7 | Australia | 23 |
| 8 | Germany | 23 |
| 9 | Spain | 16 |
| 10 | Netherlands | 13 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [artificial intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/artificial-intelligence.md) | 73 |
| 2 | [Internet of Things](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/internet-of-things.md) | 39 |
| 3 | [blockchain](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/blockchain.md) | 34 |
| 4 | [machine learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/machine-learning.md) | 34 |
| 5 | [digital transformation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/digital-transformation.md) | 25 |
| 6 | cloud computing | 24 |
| 7 | [computational efficiency](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/computational-efficiency.md) | 22 |
| 8 | [research trends](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/research-trends.md) | 17 |
| 9 | [feature selection](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/feature-selection.md) | 15 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3,134 | 32.7 | [Siri, Siri, in my hand: Who’s the fairest in the land? On the interpretations, illustrations, and implications of artificial intelligence](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2018.08.004) | [Business Horizons](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/business-horizons.md) | 2018-11-06 | Andreas Kaplan, Michael Haenlein |
| 2 | 3,023 | 33.0 | [Survey on deep learning with class imbalance](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-019-0192-5) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2019-03-19 | Justin M. Johnson, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar |
| 3 | 2,619 | 28.2 | [Artificial intelligence for decision making in the era of Big Data – evolution, challenges and research agenda](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.01.021) | [International Journal of Information Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-information-management.md) | 2019-02-09 | Yanqing Duan, John Steven Edwards, Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi |
| 4 | 2,052 | 22.1 | [Algorithm appreciation: People prefer algorithmic to human judgment](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.12.005) | [Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/organizational-behavior-and-human-decision-processes.md) | 2019-02-05 | Jennifer Marie Logg, Julia Alexandra Minson, Don A. Moore |
| 5 | 1,840 | 25.6 | [CatBoost for big data: an interdisciplinary review](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-020-00369-8) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2020-11-04 | John Hancock, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “big data”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/big-data

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-big-data,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “big data”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/big-data}},
  urldate = {2026-11-04},
  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/).