---
title: "Domain adaptation research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “domain adaptation” appeared in 1,102 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,050), information systems (20) and operations research (19)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/domain-adaptation
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/domain-adaptation.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 “domain adaptation” appeared in 1,102 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,050), information systems (20) and operations research (19). (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 “domain adaptation”

Research on “domain adaptation” 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 “domain adaptation” appeared in 1,102 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,050), information systems (20) and operations research (19).
- 191 of them were published in 2025, against 29 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (30), Xi'an Jiaotong University (21) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (17).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (139), Knowledge-Based Systems (107) and Pattern Recognition (70).
- The most-cited of them is “Deep Subdomain Adaptation Network for Image Classification” (IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2020), with 1,253 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) | 28 | 26 | 45 | 69 | 106 | 114 | 141 | 157 | 183 | 181 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 6 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 29 | 26 | 46 | 74 | 111 | 117 | 146 | 164 | 191 | 198 |

## 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) | 139 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 107 |
| 3 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 70 |
| 4 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 47 |
| 5 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 41 |
| 6 | [International Journal of Computer Vision](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-computer-vision.md) | 33 |
| 7 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 32 |
| 8 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 30 |
| 9 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 29 |
| 10 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 21 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 30 |
| 2 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 21 |
| 3 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 17 |
| 4 | [Beijing Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-institute-of-technology.md) | 16 |
| 5 | [Shanghai Jiao Tong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-jiao-tong-university.md) | 16 |
| 6 | [Chongqing University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chongqing-university.md) | 14 |
| 7 | [Nanyang Technological University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanyang-technological-university.md) | 14 |
| 8 | [Tianjin University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tianjin-university.md) | 14 |
| 9 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 14 |
| 10 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 13 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 487 |
| 2 | United States | 53 |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 44 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 39 |
| 5 | Australia | 34 |
| 6 | Singapore | 25 |
| 7 | South Korea | 24 |
| 8 | India | 22 |
| 9 | Canada | 17 |
| 10 | France | 17 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [transfer learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/transfer-learning.md) | 88 |
| 2 | [domain generalization](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/domain-generalization.md) | 44 |
| 3 | domain shift | 39 |
| 4 | [pseudo-labeling](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/pseudo-labeling.md) | 39 |
| 5 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 38 |
| 6 | distribution shift | 36 |
| 7 | [few-shot learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/few-shot-learning.md) | 35 |
| 8 | domain-invariant features | 32 |
| 9 | negative transfer | 26 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,253 | 16.1 | [Deep Subdomain Adaptation Network for Image Classification](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2020.2988928) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2020-05-04 | Yongchun Zhu, Fuzhen Zhuang, Jindong Wang et al. |
| 2 | 1,209 | 20.8 | [Domain Generalization: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2022.3195549) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2022-01-01 | Kaiyang Zhou, Ziwei Liu, Yu Qiao et al. |
| 3 | 681 | 7.0 | [Transferable Representation Learning with Deep Adaptation Networks](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2018.2868685) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2018-09-05 | Mingsheng Long, Yue Cao, Zhangjie Cao et al. |
| 4 | 613 | 7.2 | [A Review of Domain Adaptation without Target Labels](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2019.2945942) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2019-10-07 | Wouter M. Kouw, Marco Loog |
| 5 | 601 | 5.8 | [Adaptive Batch Normalization for practical domain adaptation](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2018.03.005) | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 2018-03-06 | Yanghao Li, Naiyan Wang, Jianping Shi et al. |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Transfer learning for credit across countries](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/transfer-learning-for-credit-across-countries.md)

## Cite this page

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

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