---
title: "Multi-agent systems research: papers and trends"
description: "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)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-agent-systems
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-agent-systems.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 “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). (as of 2026-11-05)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-05T06:02:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “multi-agent systems”

[Browse research topics](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/directory/page/4.md)

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.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## 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

*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) | 66 | 112 | 104 | 118 | 108 | 138 | 135 | 147 | 163 | 179 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 7 | 9 | 3 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 15 | 11 | 20 | 19 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 5 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 19 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 5 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 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

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-cybernetics.md) | 159 |
| 2 | [Information Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-sciences.md) | 103 |
| 3 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 60 |
| 4 | [IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-fuzzy-systems.md) | 41 |
| 5 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 41 |
| 6 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 33 |
| 7 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 28 |
| 8 | [Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/autonomous-agents-and-multi-agent-systems.md) | 20 |
| 9 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 17 |
| 10 | [IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-artificial-intelligence.md) | 17 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Northeastern University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northeastern-university.md) | 43 |
| 2 | [Southeast University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southeast-university.md) | 37 |
| 3 | State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries | 26 |
| 4 | [Northwestern Polytechnical University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/northwestern-polytechnical-university.md) | 23 |
| 5 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 21 |
| 6 | [South China University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/south-china-university-of-technology.md) | 21 |
| 7 | [Nanjing University of Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanjing-university-of-science-and-technology.md) | 20 |
| 8 | [Guangdong University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/guangdong-university-of-technology.md) | 19 |
| 9 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 19 |
| 10 | [Beijing Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-institute-of-technology.md) | 18 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | 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 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 72 |
| 2 | [event-triggered control](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/event-triggered-control.md) | 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](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/reinforcement-learning.md) | 30 |
| 9 | Lyapunov stability | 29 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 899 | 8.4 | [Optimal and Autonomous Control Using Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2017.2773458) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2017-12-07 | Bahare Kiumarsi, Kyriakos G. Vamvoudakis, Hamidreza Modares et al. |
| 2 | 678 | 8.0 | [A survey and critique of multiagent deep reinforcement learning](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-019-09421-1) | [Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/autonomous-agents-and-multi-agent-systems.md) | 2019-10-16 | Pablo Hernández-Leal, Bilal Kartal, Matthew Edmund Taylor |
| 3 | 519 | 6.9 | [Neural-Network-Based Event-Triggered Adaptive Control of Nonaffine Nonlinear Multiagent Systems With Dynamic Uncertainties](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2020.3003950) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2020-07-14 | Hongjing Liang, Guangliang Liu, Huaguang Zhang et al. |
| 4 | 483 | 8.1 | [Consensus in multi-agent systems: a review](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-021-10097-x) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2021-11-16 | Abdollah Amirkhani, Amir Hossein Barshooi |
| 5 | 417 | 4.0 | [Autonomous agents modelling other agents: A comprehensive survey and open problems](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2018.01.002) | [Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence.md) | 2018-02-08 | Stefano V. Albrecht, Peter Stone |

## 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

```bibtex
@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}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).