---
title: "Meta-learning research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “meta-learning” appeared in 624 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (570), operations research (29) and economics (6)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/meta-learning
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/meta-learning.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 “meta-learning” appeared in 624 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (570), operations research (29) and economics (6). (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 “meta-learning”

Research on “meta-learning” 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 “meta-learning” appeared in 624 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (570), operations research (29) and economics (6).
- 106 of them were published in 2025, against 9 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (20), Tsinghua University (15) and Xi'an Jiaotong University (15).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (61), Knowledge-Based Systems (48) and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (34).
- The most-cited of them is “A survey on Image Data Augmentation for Deep Learning” (Journal Of Big Data, 2019), with 13,151 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) | 8 | 8 | 9 | 20 | 57 | 71 | 109 | 114 | 91 | 83 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 13 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 9 | 8 | 9 | 22 | 58 | 74 | 114 | 123 | 106 | 101 |

## 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) | 61 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 48 |
| 3 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 34 |
| 4 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 32 |
| 5 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 31 |
| 6 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 26 |
| 7 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 20 |
| 8 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 20 |
| 9 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 17 |
| 10 | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 15 |

*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 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 15 |
| 3 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 15 |
| 4 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 12 |
| 5 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 11 |
| 6 | [Chongqing University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chongqing-university.md) | 10 |
| 7 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 10 |
| 8 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 10 |
| 9 | [Hong Kong University of Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-university-of-science-and-technology.md) | 9 |
| 10 | [Sun Yat-sen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sun-yat-sen-university.md) | 9 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 299 |
| 2 | United States | 77 |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 27 |
| 4 | Australia | 24 |
| 5 | United Kingdom | 20 |
| 6 | Singapore | 16 |
| 7 | Canada | 15 |
| 8 | India | 15 |
| 9 | South Korea | 13 |
| 10 | Brazil | 10 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [few-shot learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/few-shot-learning.md) | 81 |
| 2 | [domain generalization](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/domain-generalization.md) | 29 |
| 3 | [transfer learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/transfer-learning.md) | 26 |
| 4 | [class imbalance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/class-imbalance.md) | 19 |
| 5 | few-shot classification | 19 |
| 6 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 19 |
| 7 | model-agnostic meta-learning | 19 |
| 8 | [domain adaptation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/domain-adaptation.md) | 17 |
| 9 | [generalization](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/generalization.md) | 15 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13,151 | 149.5 | [A survey on Image Data Augmentation for Deep Learning](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-019-0197-0) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2019-07-06 | Connor Shorten, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar |
| 2 | 1,209 | 20.8 | [Domain Generalization: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2022.3195549) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2022-01-01 | Kaiyang Zhou, Ziwei Liu, Yu Qiao et al. |
| 3 | 888 | 12.7 | [Meta-Learning in Neural Networks: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3079209) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-01-01 | Timothy M. Hospedales, Antreas Antoniou, Paul Micaelli et al. |
| 4 | 695 | 9.9 | [A Survey on Curriculum Learning](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2021.3069908) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2021-01-01 | Xin Wang, Yudong Chen, Wenwu Zhu |
| 5 | 694 | 7.4 | [Designing neural networks through neuroevolution](https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-018-0006-z) | [Nature Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/nature-machine-intelligence.md) | 2018-12-29 | Kenneth Owen Stanley, Jeff Clune, Joel Lehman et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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