Papers on “exploration-exploitation balance”
Research on “exploration-exploitation balance” 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. Also as Markdown.
← Top research keywords · Keyword trends
Key findings#
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “exploration-exploitation balance” appeared in 868 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (751), operations research (78) and management (13).
- 128 of them were published in 2025, against 34 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Torrens University Australia (18), Mansoura University (14) and Ajman University (13).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (110), Knowledge-Based Systems (65) and Neural Computing and Applications (52).
- The most-cited of them is “Grey wolf optimizer: a review of recent variants and applications” (Neural Computing and Applications, 2017), with 1,187 citations.
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI | 29 | 32 | 39 | 52 | 74 | 150 | 107 | 83 | 105 | 80 |
| Operations Research | 4 | 2 | 4 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 12 | 10 | 16 | 10 |
| Management | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Economics | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| Information Systems | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Finance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Statistics | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Accounting | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Higher Education and Research | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 34 | 36 | 48 | 64 | 83 | 159 | 120 | 99 | 128 | 97 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Expert Systems with Applications | 110 |
| 2 | Knowledge-Based Systems | 65 |
| 3 | Neural Computing and Applications | 52 |
| 4 | Artificial Intelligence Review | 30 |
| 5 | Applied Intelligence | 27 |
| 6 | IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation | 12 |
| 7 | Journal Of Big Data | 11 |
| 8 | Knowledge and Information Systems | 9 |
| 9 | IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems | 9 |
| 10 | Computers & Operations Research | 8 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Torrens University Australia | 18 |
| 2 | Mansoura University | 14 |
| 3 | Ajman University | 13 |
| 4 | Wenzhou University | 12 |
| 5 | Al-Balqa Applied University | 11 |
| 6 | Northeastern University | 9 |
| 7 | Yonsei University | 9 |
| 8 | University of Sharjah | 8 |
| 9 | Central South University | 7 |
| 10 | Dalian University of Technology | 7 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 235 |
| 2 | India | 44 |
| 3 | United States | 38 |
| 4 | Egypt | 37 |
| 5 | Australia | 31 |
| 6 | Jordan | 22 |
| 7 | United Arab Emirates | 21 |
| 8 | Iran | 19 |
| 9 | United Kingdom | 18 |
| 10 | South Korea | 18 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | metaheuristic optimization | 123 |
| 2 | premature convergence | 61 |
| 3 | local optima avoidance | 56 |
| 4 | engineering design optimization | 49 |
| 5 | global optimization | 47 |
| 6 | population diversity | 41 |
| 7 | feature selection | 40 |
| 8 | differential evolution | 36 |
| 9 | hybrid metaheuristic | 34 |
Most-cited papers#
| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,187 | 11.1 | Grey wolf optimizer: a review of recent variants and applications | Neural Computing and Applications | 2017-11-25 | Hossam Faris, Ibrahim Aljarah, Mohammed Azmi Al‐Betar et al. |
| 2 | 1,161 | 15.8 | An improved grey wolf optimizer for solving engineering problems | Expert Systems with Applications | 2020-09-16 | Mohammad H. Nadimi-Shahraki, Shokooh Taghian, Seyedali Mirjalili |
| 3 | 1,138 | 15.6 | Archimedes optimization algorithm: a new metaheuristic algorithm for solving optimization problems | Applied Intelligence | 2020-09-29 | Fatma A. Hashim, Kashif Hussain, Essam Halim Houssein et al. |
| 4 | 1,118 | 19.7 | Snake Optimizer: A novel meta-heuristic optimization algorithm | Knowledge-Based Systems | 2022-02-08 | Fatma A. Hashim, Abdelazim G. Hussien |
| 5 | 1,067 | 15.7 | Hunger games search: Visions, conception, implementation, deep analysis, perspectives, and towards performance shifts | Expert Systems with Applications | 2021-03-10 | Yutao Yang, Huiling Chen, Ali Asghar Heidari et al. |
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “exploration-exploitation balance”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/exploration-exploitation-balance
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-exploration-exploitation-balance,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Papers on “exploration-exploitation balance”},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/exploration-exploitation-balance}},
urldate = {2026-11-03},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}