---
title: "Deep reinforcement learning research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “deep reinforcement learning” appeared in 1,255 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (886), operations research (305) and finance (24)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/deep-reinforcement-learning
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/deep-reinforcement-learning.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 “deep reinforcement learning” appeared in 1,255 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (886), operations research (305) and finance (24). (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 “deep reinforcement learning”

Research on “deep reinforcement learning” 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 “deep reinforcement learning” appeared in 1,255 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (886), operations research (305) and finance (24).
- 283 of them were published in 2025, against 6 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Tsinghua University (32), Beihang University (20) and Beijing Jiaotong University (20).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (199), Computers & Industrial Engineering (73) and Applied Intelligence (64).
- The most-cited of them is “Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey” (IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2022), with 973 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) | 6 | 9 | 24 | 45 | 77 | 121 | 136 | 157 | 178 | 133 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 23 | 22 | 38 | 58 | 86 | 68 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 8 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 0 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 6 | 10 | 28 | 53 | 106 | 148 | 180 | 227 | 283 | 214 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 199 |
| 2 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 73 |
| 3 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 64 |
| 4 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 56 |
| 5 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 52 |
| 6 | [Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-c-emerging-technologies.md) | 47 |
| 7 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 42 |
| 8 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 28 |
| 9 | [Computers & Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-operations-research.md) | 26 |
| 10 | [Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-e-logistics-and-transportation-review.md) | 26 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 32 |
| 2 | [Beihang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beihang-university.md) | 20 |
| 3 | [Beijing Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-jiaotong-university.md) | 20 |
| 4 | [Eindhoven University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/eindhoven-university-of-technology.md) | 20 |
| 5 | [Huazhong University of Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/huazhong-university-of-science-and-technology.md) | 20 |
| 6 | [National University of Defense Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/national-university-of-defense-technology.md) | 20 |
| 7 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 18 |
| 8 | [Southeast University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southeast-university.md) | 18 |
| 9 | [Nanyang Technological University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanyang-technological-university.md) | 17 |
| 10 | [Tongji University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tongji-university.md) | 17 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 584 |
| 2 | United States | 98 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 45 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 37 |
| 5 | Netherlands | 37 |
| 6 | Singapore | 35 |
| 7 | Canada | 33 |
| 8 | Australia | 32 |
| 9 | India | 29 |
| 10 | South Korea | 29 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Markov decision process](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/markov-decision-process.md) | 101 |
| 2 | proximal policy optimization | 89 |
| 3 | reward function design | 67 |
| 4 | deep Q-network | 61 |
| 5 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 36 |
| 6 | double deep Q-network | 35 |
| 7 | soft actor-critic | 35 |
| 8 | [multi-objective optimization](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-objective-optimization.md) | 33 |
| 9 | deep deterministic policy gradient | 31 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 973 | 19.8 | [Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2022.3207346) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2022-09-28 | Xu Wang, Sen Wang, Xingxing Liang et al. |
| 2 | 960 | 14.4 | [Multi-agent deep reinforcement learning: a survey](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-021-09996-w) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2021-04-15 | Sven Gronauer, Klaus J. Diepold |
| 3 | 861 | 21.5 | [Transfer Learning in Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2023.3292075) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2023-07-04 | Zhuangdi Zhu, Kaixiang Lin, Anil K. Jain et al. |
| 4 | 846 | 8.1 | [Applications of Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning to Biological Data](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2018.2790388) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2018-01-31 | Mufti Mahmud, M. Shamim Kaiser, Amir Hussain et al. |
| 5 | 794 | 12.4 | [Artificial intelligence in the creative industries: a review](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-021-10039-7) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2021-07-01 | Nantheera Anantrasirichai, David Bull |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Deep reinforcement learning for portfolios, replicated](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/deep-rl-for-portfolios-reproducibility.md)

## Cite this page

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

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-deep-reinforcement-learning,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “deep reinforcement learning”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/deep-reinforcement-learning}},
  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/).