---
title: "Exploration-exploitation balance research"
description: "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)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/exploration-exploitation-balance
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/exploration-exploitation-balance.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 “exploration-exploitation balance” appeared in 868 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (751), operations research (78) and management (13). (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 “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.

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

## 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

*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) | 29 | 32 | 39 | 52 | 74 | 150 | 107 | 83 | 105 | 80 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 4 | 2 | 4 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 12 | 10 | 16 | 10 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 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

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 110 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 65 |
| 3 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 52 |
| 4 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 30 |
| 5 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 27 |
| 6 | [IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-evolutionary-computation.md) | 12 |
| 7 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 11 |
| 8 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 9 |
| 9 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 9 |
| 10 | [Computers & Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-operations-research.md) | 8 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | 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](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northeastern-university.md) | 9 |
| 7 | [Yonsei University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/yonsei-university.md) | 9 |
| 8 | University of Sharjah | 8 |
| 9 | [Central South University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/central-south-university.md) | 7 |
| 10 | [Dalian University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/dalian-university-of-technology.md) | 7 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | 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 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [metaheuristic optimization](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/metaheuristic-optimization.md) | 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](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/feature-selection.md) | 40 |
| 8 | differential evolution | 36 |
| 9 | hybrid metaheuristic | 34 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,187 | 11.1 | [Grey wolf optimizer: a review of recent variants and applications](https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-017-3272-5) | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2020.113917) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-020-01893-z) | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2022.108320) | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 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](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2021.114864) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 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

```bibtex
@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}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).