---
title: "K-means clustering research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “K-means clustering” appeared in 869 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (548), operations research (172) and economics (35)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/k-means-clustering
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/k-means-clustering.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 “K-means clustering” appeared in 869 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (548), operations research (172) and economics (35). (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 “K-means clustering”

Research on “K-means clustering” 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 “K-means clustering” appeared in 869 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (548), operations research (172) and economics (35).
- 118 of them were published in 2025, against 50 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Northwestern Polytechnical University (11), Tsinghua University (9) and Xi'an Jiaotong University (8).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (72), Pattern Recognition (20) and Knowledge-Based Systems (19).
- The most-cited of them is “K-means properties on six clustering benchmark datasets” (Applied Intelligence, 2018), with 519 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) | 31 | 38 | 35 | 67 | 51 | 89 | 67 | 61 | 66 | 43 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 12 | 7 | 11 | 13 | 21 | 24 | 16 | 22 | 32 | 14 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 1 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 6 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 8 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 50 | 57 | 52 | 92 | 88 | 120 | 104 | 102 | 118 | 86 |

## 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) | 72 |
| 2 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 20 |
| 3 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 19 |
| 4 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 18 |
| 5 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 15 |
| 6 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 12 |
| 7 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 12 |
| 8 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 12 |
| 9 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 11 |
| 10 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 9 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Northwestern Polytechnical University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northwestern-polytechnical-university.md) | 11 |
| 2 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 9 |
| 3 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 8 |
| 4 | [National University of Defense Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/national-university-of-defense-technology.md) | 7 |
| 5 | [Shenzhen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shenzhen-university.md) | 7 |
| 6 | [Xidian University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xidian-university.md) | 7 |
| 7 | [South China University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/south-china-university-of-technology.md) | 6 |
| 8 | [Southeast University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southeast-university.md) | 6 |
| 9 | [Tongji University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tongji-university.md) | 6 |
| 10 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 5 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 176 |
| 2 | United States | 41 |
| 3 | India | 30 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 28 |
| 5 | Iran | 20 |
| 6 | Spain | 18 |
| 7 | Australia | 15 |
| 8 | Taiwan | 15 |
| 9 | Brazil | 14 |
| 10 | Turkey | 12 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | hierarchical clustering | 18 |
| 2 | customer segmentation | 17 |
| 3 | DBSCAN | 14 |
| 4 | unsupervised clustering | 13 |
| 5 | [random forest](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/random-forest.md) | 12 |
| 6 | [class imbalance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/class-imbalance.md) | 11 |
| 7 | [feature selection](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/feature-selection.md) | 11 |
| 8 | multi-view clustering | 11 |
| 9 | spectral clustering | 11 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 519 | 5.2 | [K-means properties on six clustering benchmark datasets](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-018-1238-7) | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 2018-07-26 | Pasi Fränti, Sami Sieranoja |
| 2 | 452 | 5.0 | [How much can k-means be improved by using better initialization and repeats?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2019.04.014) | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 2019-04-15 | Pasi Fränti, Sami Sieranoja |
| 3 | 443 | 5.1 | [Forecasting across time series databases using recurrent neural networks on groups of similar series: A clustering approach](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2019.112896) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2019-08-26 | Kasun Bandara, Christoph Bergmeir, Slawek Smyl |
| 4 | 396 | 11.6 | [Plant disease detection and classification techniques: a comparative study of the performances](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-023-00863-9) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2024-01-02 | Wubetu Barud Demilie |
| 5 | 376 | 3.4 | [A consensus model for large-scale group decision making with hesitant fuzzy information and changeable clusters](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2017.09.011) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2017-09-12 | Zhibin Wu, Jiuping Xu |

## Cite this page

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

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