---
title: "Interpretability research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “interpretability” appeared in 1,697 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,473), operations research (85) and information systems (46)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/interpretability
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/interpretability.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 “interpretability” appeared in 1,697 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,473), operations research (85) and information systems (46). (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 “interpretability”

Research on “interpretability” 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 “interpretability” appeared in 1,697 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,473), operations research (85) and information systems (46).
- 401 of them were published in 2025, against 13 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (29), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (28) and Zhejiang University (28).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (208), Knowledge-Based Systems (125) and Neural Networks (73).
- The most-cited of them is “Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, taxonomies, opportunities and challenges toward responsible AI” (Information Fusion, 2019), with 10,445 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) | 13 | 16 | 40 | 59 | 105 | 154 | 165 | 241 | 355 | 325 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 11 | 11 | 22 | 19 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 10 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 9 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 13 | 22 | 43 | 72 | 126 | 171 | 193 | 274 | 401 | 382 |

## 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) | 208 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 125 |
| 3 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 73 |
| 4 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 70 |
| 5 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 60 |
| 6 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 53 |
| 7 | [IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-fuzzy-systems.md) | 52 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 50 |
| 9 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 48 |
| 10 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 46 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 29 |
| 2 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 28 |
| 3 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 28 |
| 4 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 27 |
| 5 | [Northwestern Polytechnical University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northwestern-polytechnical-university.md) | 26 |
| 6 | [Sichuan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sichuan-university.md) | 25 |
| 7 | [University of Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 23 |
| 8 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 23 |
| 9 | [Dalian University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/dalian-university-of-technology.md) | 22 |
| 10 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 21 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 767 |
| 2 | United States | 121 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 83 |
| 4 | Italy | 64 |
| 5 | Australia | 59 |
| 6 | Hong Kong | 58 |
| 7 | Spain | 49 |
| 8 | South Korea | 47 |
| 9 | India | 46 |
| 10 | Germany | 37 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [explainable AI](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/explainable-ai.md) | 149 |
| 2 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 94 |
| 3 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 75 |
| 4 | [attention mechanism](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/attention-mechanism.md) | 56 |
| 5 | [feature selection](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/feature-selection.md) | 54 |
| 6 | [SHAP](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/shap.md) | 40 |
| 7 | [class imbalance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/class-imbalance.md) | 32 |
| 8 | black-box models | 31 |
| 9 | [transformer models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/transformer-models.md) | 30 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10,445 | 127.0 | [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, taxonomies, opportunities and challenges toward responsible AI](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2019.12.012) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2019-12-26 | Alejandro Barredo Arrieta, Natalia Díaz-Rodríguez, Javier Del Ser et al. |
| 2 | 3,279 | 50.8 | [Temporal Fusion Transformers for interpretable multi-horizon time series forecasting](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2021.03.012) | [International Journal of Forecasting](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-forecasting.md) | 2021-06-16 | Bryan Y. Lim, Sercan Ö. Arık, Nicolas Loeff et al. |
| 3 | 2,517 | 34.8 | [A Survey on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Toward Medical XAI](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2020.3027314) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2020-10-21 | Erico Tjoa, Cuntai Guan |
| 4 | 800 | 7.7 | [A hybrid deep learning based traffic flow prediction method and its understanding](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2018.03.001) | [Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-c-emerging-technologies.md) | 2018-03-20 | Yuankai Wu, Huachun Tan, Lingqiao Qin et al. |
| 5 | 717 | 11.4 | [Unbox the black-box for the medical explainable AI via multi-modal and multi-centre data fusion: A mini-review, two showcases and beyond](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2021.07.016) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2021-07-31 | Guang Yang, Qinghao Ye, Jun Xia |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Explaining the optimizer's answer](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/explainable-optimization.md)

## Cite this page

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

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