---
title: "Graph convolutional networks research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “graph convolutional networks” appeared in 1,425 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,326), operations research (54) and information systems (15)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-convolutional-networks
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-convolutional-networks.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 “graph convolutional networks” appeared in 1,425 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,326), operations research (54) and information systems (15). (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 “graph convolutional networks”

Research on “graph convolutional networks” 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 “graph convolutional networks” appeared in 1,425 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,326), operations research (54) and information systems (15).
- 298 of them were published in 2025, against 0 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (40), Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications (28) and Fuzhou University (24).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (216), Knowledge-Based Systems (126) and Pattern Recognition (90).
- The most-cited of them is “A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks” (IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2020), with 10,982 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) | 0 | 3 | 8 | 63 | 130 | 206 | 228 | 251 | 275 | 162 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 10 | 5 | 13 | 10 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 0 | 4 | 12 | 69 | 137 | 215 | 244 | 265 | 298 | 181 |

## 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) | 216 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 126 |
| 3 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 90 |
| 4 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 76 |
| 5 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 64 |
| 6 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 64 |
| 7 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 50 |
| 8 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 45 |
| 9 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 37 |
| 10 | [Information Processing & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-processing-management.md) | 27 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 40 |
| 2 | [Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chongqing-university-of-posts-and-telecommunications.md) | 28 |
| 3 | [Fuzhou University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/fuzhou-university.md) | 24 |
| 4 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 22 |
| 5 | [Xidian University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xidian-university.md) | 22 |
| 6 | [Anhui University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/anhui-university.md) | 19 |
| 7 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 19 |
| 8 | [Beijing Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-jiaotong-university.md) | 18 |
| 9 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 18 |
| 10 | [Shanghai Jiao Tong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-jiao-tong-university.md) | 17 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 791 |
| 2 | United States | 55 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 51 |
| 4 | Australia | 48 |
| 5 | Hong Kong | 46 |
| 6 | India | 35 |
| 7 | Singapore | 29 |
| 8 | South Korea | 26 |
| 9 | Spain | 22 |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | 20 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [attention mechanism](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/attention-mechanism.md) | 93 |
| 2 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 76 |
| 3 | over-smoothing | 57 |
| 4 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 42 |
| 5 | traffic flow prediction | 37 |
| 6 | node classification | 35 |
| 7 | [recommender systems](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/recommender-systems.md) | 35 |
| 8 | graph attention networks | 34 |
| 9 | graph representation learning | 32 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10,982 | 138.4 | [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2020.2978386) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2020-03-24 | Zonghan Wu, Shirui Pan, Fengwen Chen et al. |
| 2 | 1,659 | 20.9 | [Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2020.2981333) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2020-03-17 | Ziwei Zhang, Peng Cui, Wenwu Zhu |
| 3 | 1,339 | 25.6 | [Graph neural network for traffic forecasting: A survey](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2022.117921) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2022-06-23 | Weiwei Jiang, Jiayun Luo |
| 4 | 635 | 18.9 | [A review of graph neural networks: concepts, architectures, techniques, challenges, datasets, applications, and future directions](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-023-00876-4) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2024-01-16 | Bharti Khemani, Shruti Patil, Ketan V. Kotecha et al. |
| 5 | 537 | 9.6 | [Constructing Stronger and Faster Baselines for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2022.3157033) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2022-03-07 | Yifan Song, Zhang Zhang, Caifeng Shan et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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