---
title: "Markov decision process research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “Markov decision process” appeared in 741 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (454), AI (246) and economics (10)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/markov-decision-process
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/markov-decision-process.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 “Markov decision process” appeared in 741 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (454), AI (246) and economics (10). (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 “Markov decision process”

Research on “Markov decision process” 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 “Markov decision process” appeared in 741 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (454), AI (246) and economics (10).
- 125 of them were published in 2025, against 33 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Tsinghua University (14), Southwest Jiaotong University (13) and Eindhoven University of Technology (12).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (48), Computers & Industrial Engineering (42) and European Journal of Operational Research (38).
- The most-cited of them is “Challenges of real-world reinforcement learning: definitions, benchmarks and analysis” (Machine Learning, 2021), with 662 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 27 | 25 | 33 | 41 | 37 | 39 | 53 | 68 | 72 | 59 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 3 | 6 | 6 | 10 | 25 | 37 | 38 | 42 | 48 | 31 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 33 | 32 | 41 | 55 | 65 | 80 | 94 | 116 | 125 | 100 |

## 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) | 48 |
| 2 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 42 |
| 3 | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 38 |
| 4 | [Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-e-logistics-and-transportation-review.md) | 28 |
| 5 | [Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-c-emerging-technologies.md) | 23 |
| 6 | [Computers & Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-operations-research.md) | 18 |
| 7 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 17 |
| 8 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 15 |
| 9 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 14 |
| 10 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 13 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 14 |
| 2 | [Southwest Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southwest-jiaotong-university.md) | 13 |
| 3 | [Eindhoven University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/eindhoven-university-of-technology.md) | 12 |
| 4 | [Beijing Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-jiaotong-university.md) | 10 |
| 5 | [National University of Singapore](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/national-university-of-singapore.md) | 10 |
| 6 | [Beihang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beihang-university.md) | 9 |
| 7 | [Huazhong University of Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/huazhong-university-of-science-and-technology.md) | 9 |
| 8 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 8 |
| 9 | [Shanghai Jiao Tong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-jiao-tong-university.md) | 8 |
| 10 | [Shenzhen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shenzhen-university.md) | 8 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 233 |
| 2 | United States | 81 |
| 3 | Netherlands | 31 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 28 |
| 5 | Hong Kong | 25 |
| 6 | Canada | 24 |
| 7 | Germany | 20 |
| 8 | France | 20 |
| 9 | Singapore | 18 |
| 10 | Italy | 15 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [deep reinforcement learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/deep-reinforcement-learning.md) | 101 |
| 2 | [reinforcement learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/reinforcement-learning.md) | 50 |
| 3 | proximal policy optimization | 36 |
| 4 | approximate dynamic programming | 29 |
| 5 | deep Q-network | 21 |
| 6 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 17 |
| 7 | reward function design | 17 |
| 8 | Q-learning | 16 |
| 9 | multi-agent reinforcement learning | 15 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 662 | 10.0 | [Challenges of real-world reinforcement learning: definitions, benchmarks and analysis](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10994-021-05961-4) | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 2021-04-22 | Gabriel Dulac-Arnold, Nir Levine, Daniel J. Mankowitz et al. |
| 2 | 242 | 3.2 | [Deep reinforcement learning based AGVs real-time scheduling with mixed rule for flexible shop floor in industry 4.0](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2020.106749) | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 2020-08-13 | Hao Hu, Xiaoliang Jia, Qixuan He et al. |
| 3 | 203 | 3.9 | [How are reinforcement learning and deep learning algorithms used for big data based decision making in financial industries–A review and research agenda](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jjimei.2022.100094) | [International Journal of Information Management Data Insights](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-information-management-data-insights.md) | 2022-06-28 | Vinay Kumar Singh, Shiuann-Shuoh Chen, Minal Singhania et al. |
| 4 | 192 | 4.5 | [Dynamic scheduling for flexible job shop using a deep reinforcement learning approach](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2023.109255) | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 2023-04-21 | Yong Gui, Dunbing Tang, Haihua Zhu et al. |
| 5 | 181 | 2.2 | [Dynamic selective maintenance optimization for multi-state systems over a finite horizon: A deep reinforcement learning approach](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.10.049) | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 2019-11-07 | Yu Liu, Yiming Chen, Tao Jiang |

## Cite this page

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

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