---
title: "Data envelopment analysis research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “data envelopment analysis” appeared in 1,144 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (725), economics (177) and AI (102)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/data-envelopment-analysis
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/data-envelopment-analysis.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 “data envelopment analysis” appeared in 1,144 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (725), economics (177) and AI (102). (as of 2026-11-03)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-03T18:03:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-05 to 2026-11-03
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “data envelopment analysis”

Research on “data envelopment analysis” 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 “data envelopment analysis” appeared in 1,144 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (725), economics (177) and AI (102).
- 94 of them were published in 2025, against 119 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Central South University (15), Hefei University of Technology (15) and Loughborough University (15).
- The journals publishing most of them were European Journal of Operational Research (51), Annals of Operations Research (44) and Expert Systems with Applications (31).
- The most-cited of them is “A survey and analysis of the first 40 years of scholarly literature in DEA: 1978–2016” (Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 2017), with 1,272 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 71 | 89 | 87 | 82 | 74 | 68 | 64 | 80 | 57 | 53 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 23 | 19 | 21 | 16 | 16 | 19 | 26 | 11 | 18 | 8 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 14 | 9 | 6 | 13 | 9 | 14 | 16 | 12 | 7 | 2 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 4 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 2 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 2 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 3 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 119 | 127 | 125 | 128 | 120 | 119 | 126 | 117 | 94 | 69 |

## Where the papers come from

*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) | 51 |
| 2 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 44 |
| 3 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 31 |
| 4 | [Socio-Economic Planning Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/socio-economic-planning-sciences.md) | 29 |
| 5 | [Omega](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/omega.md) | 25 |
| 6 | [Journal of Productivity Analysis](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-productivity-analysis.md) | 20 |
| 7 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 18 |
| 8 | [Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/operational-research.md) | 16 |
| 9 | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 9 |
| 10 | [Research in Transportation Business & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/research-in-transportation-business-management.md) | 9 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Central South University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/central-south-university.md) | 15 |
| 2 | [Hefei University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hefei-university-of-technology.md) | 15 |
| 3 | Loughborough University | 15 |
| 4 | Universitat de Miguel Hernández d'Elx | 15 |
| 5 | [The University of Queensland](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland.md) | 14 |
| 6 | [University of Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 14 |
| 7 | [University of Surrey](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-surrey.md) | 14 |
| 8 | Islamic Azad University, Tehran | 11 |
| 9 | Istinye University | 8 |
| 10 | [University of Tehran](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-tehran.md) | 8 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 103 |
| 2 | Iran | 57 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 50 |
| 4 | United States | 36 |
| 5 | Spain | 30 |
| 6 | France | 26 |
| 7 | Australia | 22 |
| 8 | Taiwan | 19 |
| 9 | Canada | 17 |
| 10 | Italy | 17 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | efficiency measurement | 58 |
| 2 | decision making units | 41 |
| 3 | undesirable outputs | 32 |
| 4 | benchmarking | 30 |
| 5 | technical efficiency | 25 |
| 6 | variable returns to scale | 18 |
| 7 | [multi-criteria decision making](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-criteria-decision-making.md) | 15 |
| 8 | directional distance function | 14 |
| 9 | efficient frontier | 14 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,272 | 10.9 | [A survey and analysis of the first 40 years of scholarly literature in DEA: 1978–2016](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2017.01.008) | [Socio-Economic Planning Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/socio-economic-planning-sciences.md) | 2017-01-26 | Ali Emrouznejad, Guo-liang Yang |
| 2 | 432 | 4.1 | [The use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in healthcare with a focus on hospitals](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-018-9436-8) | [Health Care Management Science](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/health-care-management-science.md) | 2018-02-23 | Sebastian Kohl, Jan Schoenfelder, Andreas Fügener et al. |
| 3 | 359 | 3.2 | [Data envelopment analysis application in sustainability: The origins, development and future directions](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.06.023) | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 2017-06-16 | Haibo Zhou, Yi Yang, Yao Chen et al. |
| 4 | 285 | 3.7 | [Developing Low Carbon Finance Index: Evidence From Developed and Developing Economies](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101520) | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 2020-05-05 | Muhammad Mohsin, Farhad Taghizadeh Hesary, Nisit Panthamit et al. |
| 5 | 256 | 2.5 | [Building composite indicators using multicriteria methods: a review](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-018-0902-z) | [Journal of Business Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-economics.md) | 2018-03-19 | Samira El Gibari, Trinidad Gómez, Francisco Ruiz |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “data envelopment analysis”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/data-envelopment-analysis

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-data-envelopment-analysis,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “data envelopment analysis”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/data-envelopment-analysis}},
  urldate = {2026-11-03},
  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/).