---
title: "Knowledge graphs research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “knowledge graphs” appeared in 732 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (650), information systems (31) and operations research (28)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/knowledge-graphs
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/knowledge-graphs.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 “knowledge graphs” appeared in 732 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (650), information systems (31) and operations research (28). (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 “knowledge graphs”

Research on “knowledge graphs” 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 “knowledge graphs” appeared in 732 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (650), information systems (31) and operations research (28).
- 162 of them were published in 2025, against 8 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (20), Sun Yat-sen University (12) and Northwestern Polytechnical University (11).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (108), Knowledge-Based Systems (77) and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (46).
- The most-cited of them is “A Survey on Knowledge Graphs: Representation, Acquisition, and Applications” (IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2021), with 2,956 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) | 7 | 9 | 11 | 29 | 60 | 78 | 79 | 110 | 148 | 119 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 8 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 13 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 8 | 9 | 13 | 32 | 65 | 85 | 91 | 119 | 162 | 148 |

## 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) | 108 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 77 |
| 3 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 46 |
| 4 | [Information Processing & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-processing-management.md) | 36 |
| 5 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 32 |
| 6 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 28 |
| 7 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 28 |
| 8 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 25 |
| 9 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 18 |
| 10 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 10 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 20 |
| 2 | [Sun Yat-sen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sun-yat-sen-university.md) | 12 |
| 3 | [Northwestern Polytechnical University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northwestern-polytechnical-university.md) | 11 |
| 4 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 11 |
| 5 | [Nanjing University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanjing-university.md) | 10 |
| 6 | [South China University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/south-china-university-of-technology.md) | 10 |
| 7 | [Tongji University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tongji-university.md) | 10 |
| 8 | [Central China Normal University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/central-china-normal-university.md) | 9 |
| 9 | [Dalian University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/dalian-university-of-technology.md) | 9 |
| 10 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 9 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 351 |
| 2 | United States | 39 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 38 |
| 4 | Australia | 28 |
| 5 | Italy | 22 |
| 6 | Spain | 16 |
| 7 | Hong Kong | 16 |
| 8 | France | 12 |
| 9 | India | 12 |
| 10 | South Korea | 12 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 99 |
| 2 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 45 |
| 3 | retrieval-augmented generation | 27 |
| 4 | [interpretability](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/interpretability.md) | 26 |
| 5 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 22 |
| 6 | [graph convolutional networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-convolutional-networks.md) | 22 |
| 7 | entity alignment | 21 |
| 8 | knowledge graph embedding | 20 |
| 9 | data sparsity | 19 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,956 | 44.6 | [A Survey on Knowledge Graphs: Representation, Acquisition, and Applications](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2021.3070843) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2021-04-26 | Shaoxiong Ji, Shirui Pan, Erik Cambria et al. |
| 2 | 1,381 | 40.9 | [Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2024.3352100) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2024-01-10 | Shirui Pan, Linhao Luo, Yufei Wang et al. |
| 3 | 1,035 | 12.1 | [A review: Knowledge reasoning over knowledge graph](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2019.112948) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2019-09-13 | Xiaojun Chen, Shengbin Jia, Yang Xiang |
| 4 | 718 | 16.7 | [Knowledge Graphs: Opportunities and Challenges](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-023-10465-9) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2023-04-03 | Ciyuan Peng, Feng Xia, Mehdi Naseriparsa et al. |
| 5 | 494 | 7.4 | [Graph Learning: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tai.2021.3076021) | [IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-artificial-intelligence.md) | 2021-04-01 | Feng Xia, Ke Sun, Shuo Yu et al. |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Knowledge graphs and rules for compliance](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/knowledge-graphs-for-compliance.md)

## Cite this page

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

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