---
title: "Knowledge transfer research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “knowledge transfer” appeared in 1,154 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (486), management (355) and economics (109)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/knowledge-transfer
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/knowledge-transfer.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 transfer” appeared in 1,154 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (486), management (355) and economics (109). (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 transfer”

Research on “knowledge transfer” 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 transfer” appeared in 1,154 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (486), management (355) and economics (109).
- 193 of them were published in 2025, against 76 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Hong Kong Polytechnic University (23), Shenzhen University (19) and Nankai University (14).
- The journals publishing most of them were IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (69), Expert Systems with Applications (51) and Knowledge-Based Systems (36).
- The most-cited of them is “Knowledge Distillation and Student-Teacher Learning for Visual Intelligence: A Review and New Outlooks” (IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2021), with 909 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) | 10 | 12 | 14 | 26 | 38 | 58 | 70 | 92 | 102 | 64 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 31 | 41 | 35 | 32 | 48 | 31 | 32 | 28 | 50 | 27 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 8 | 13 | 12 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 13 | 9 | 15 | 9 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 9 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 11 | 11 | 4 | 5 | 10 | 4 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 6 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 4 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| All categories | 76 | 83 | 74 | 85 | 122 | 121 | 136 | 145 | 193 | 119 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-evolutionary-computation.md) | 69 |
| 2 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 51 |
| 3 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 36 |
| 4 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 28 |
| 5 | [The Journal of Technology Transfer](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/the-journal-of-technology-transfer.md) | 28 |
| 6 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 19 |
| 7 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 17 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 16 |
| 9 | [Technovation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technovation.md) | 15 |
| 10 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 13 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 23 |
| 2 | [Shenzhen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shenzhen-university.md) | 19 |
| 3 | [Nankai University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nankai-university.md) | 14 |
| 4 | [Xidian University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xidian-university.md) | 14 |
| 5 | [Northeastern University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northeastern-university.md) | 13 |
| 6 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 13 |
| 7 | [Nanyang Technological University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanyang-technological-university.md) | 12 |
| 8 | [China University of Geosciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/china-university-of-geosciences.md) | 11 |
| 9 | [City University of Hong Kong](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/city-university-of-hong-kong.md) | 11 |
| 10 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 11 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 332 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 80 |
| 3 | United States | 70 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 50 |
| 5 | Australia | 31 |
| 6 | Italy | 30 |
| 7 | Germany | 28 |
| 8 | Spain | 21 |
| 9 | France | 19 |
| 10 | South Korea | 19 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [catastrophic forgetting](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/catastrophic-forgetting.md) | 27 |
| 2 | [multinational corporations](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multinational-corporations.md) | 27 |
| 3 | university-industry collaboration | 25 |
| 4 | continual learning | 22 |
| 5 | [transfer learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/transfer-learning.md) | 20 |
| 6 | [domain adaptation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/domain-adaptation.md) | 19 |
| 7 | evolutionary multitasking | 18 |
| 8 | [innovation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/innovation.md) | 17 |
| 9 | negative transfer | 17 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 909 | 13.2 | [Knowledge Distillation and Student-Teacher Learning for Visual Intelligence: A Review and New Outlooks](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3055564) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-01-29 | Lin Wang, Kuk-Jin Yoon |
| 2 | 861 | 21.5 | [Transfer Learning in Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2023.3292075) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2023-07-04 | Zhuangdi Zhu, Kaixiang Lin, Anil K. Jain et al. |
| 3 | 697 | 6.4 | [External knowledge sources, green innovation and performance](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.09.017) | [Technological Forecasting and Social Change](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change.md) | 2017-10-12 | Wissal Ben Arfi, Lubica Hikkerova, Jean‐Michel Sahut |
| 4 | 569 | 7.7 | [Academic engagement: A review of the literature 2011-2019](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2020.104114) | [Research Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/research-policy.md) | 2020-08-29 | Markus Perkmann, Rossella Salandra, Valentina Tartari et al. |
| 5 | 439 | 4.8 | [Multifactorial Evolutionary Algorithm With Online Transfer Parameter Estimation: MFEA-II](https://doi.org/10.1109/tevc.2019.2906927) | [IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-evolutionary-computation.md) | 2019-03-22 | Kavitesh Kumar Bali, Yew-Soon Ong, Abhishek Gupta et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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