Papers on “multi-agent systems”
Research on “multi-agent systems” 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. Also as Markdown.
← Top research keywords · Keyword trends
Key findings#
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “multi-agent systems” appeared in 1,480 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,270), operations research (116) and information systems (49).
- 201 of them were published in 2025, against 81 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Northeastern University (43), Southeast University (37) and State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries (26).
- The journals publishing most of them were IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (159), Information Sciences (103) and Expert Systems with Applications (60).
- The most-cited of them is “Optimal and Autonomous Control Using Reinforcement Learning: A Survey” (IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2017), with 899 citations.
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI | 66 | 112 | 104 | 118 | 108 | 138 | 135 | 147 | 163 | 179 |
| Operations Research | 7 | 9 | 3 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 15 | 11 | 20 | 19 |
| Information Systems | 5 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 19 |
| Higher Education and Research | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 5 |
| Economics | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Management | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Finance | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Statistics | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Marketing | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 81 | 126 | 116 | 132 | 119 | 158 | 155 | 161 | 201 | 231 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics | 159 |
| 2 | Information Sciences | 103 |
| 3 | Expert Systems with Applications | 60 |
| 4 | IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems | 41 |
| 5 | IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems | 41 |
| 6 | Knowledge-Based Systems | 33 |
| 7 | Neural Networks | 28 |
| 8 | Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems | 20 |
| 9 | Information Fusion | 17 |
| 10 | IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence | 17 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northeastern University | 43 |
| 2 | Southeast University | 37 |
| 3 | State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries | 26 |
| 4 | Northwestern Polytechnical University | 23 |
| 5 | Harbin Institute of Technology | 21 |
| 6 | South China University of Technology | 21 |
| 7 | Nanjing University of Science and Technology | 20 |
| 8 | Guangdong University of Technology | 19 |
| 9 | University of Electronic Science and Technology of China | 19 |
| 10 | Beijing Institute of Technology | 18 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 518 |
| 2 | United States | 50 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 42 |
| 4 | South Korea | 35 |
| 5 | Australia | 31 |
| 6 | India | 26 |
| 7 | France | 24 |
| 8 | Italy | 24 |
| 9 | Hong Kong | 23 |
| 10 | Canada | 20 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | large language models | 72 |
| 2 | event-triggered control | 71 |
| 3 | distributed control | 44 |
| 4 | leader-following consensus | 44 |
| 5 | denial-of-service attacks | 43 |
| 6 | backstepping control | 34 |
| 7 | adaptive control | 33 |
| 8 | reinforcement learning | 30 |
| 9 | Lyapunov stability | 29 |
Most-cited papers#
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “multi-agent systems”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-agent-systems
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-multi-agent-systems,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Papers on “multi-agent systems”},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-agent-systems}},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}