---
title: "Multi-criteria decision making research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “multi-criteria decision making” appeared in 2,473 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (1,107), AI (808) and economics (234)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-criteria-decision-making
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-criteria-decision-making.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-criteria decision making” appeared in 2,473 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (1,107), AI (808) and economics (234). (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 “multi-criteria decision making”

Research on “multi-criteria decision making” 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-criteria decision making” appeared in 2,473 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in operations research (1,107), AI (808) and economics (234).
- 263 of them were published in 2025, against 210 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Yuan Ze University (54), University of Belgrade (51) and Milli Savunma Üniversitesi (38).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (194), Annals of Operations Research (80) and Decision Analytics Journal (49).
- The most-cited of them is “Sustainable supplier selection in healthcare industries using a new MCDM method: Measurement of alternatives and ranking according to COmpromise solution (MARCOS)” (Computers & Industrial Engineering, 2019), with 1,439 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) | 101 | 100 | 102 | 92 | 98 | 138 | 138 | 128 | 110 | 100 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 51 | 61 | 62 | 62 | 101 | 112 | 131 | 92 | 81 | 55 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 34 | 19 | 25 | 26 | 20 | 17 | 25 | 13 | 34 | 21 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 7 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 17 | 16 | 17 | 11 | 13 | 6 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 6 | 1 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 10 | 11 | 6 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 8 | 19 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 7 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 210 | 215 | 212 | 210 | 262 | 300 | 324 | 271 | 263 | 206 |

## 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) | 194 |
| 2 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 80 |
| 3 | [Decision Analytics Journal](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/decision-analytics-journal.md) | 49 |
| 4 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 43 |
| 5 | [Socio-Economic Planning Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/socio-economic-planning-sciences.md) | 34 |
| 6 | [Operations Research Forum](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/operations-research-forum.md) | 31 |
| 7 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 30 |
| 8 | [Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/operational-research.md) | 29 |
| 9 | [Omega](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/omega.md) | 27 |
| 10 | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 27 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Yuan Ze University | 54 |
| 2 | University of Belgrade | 51 |
| 3 | Milli Savunma Üniversitesi | 38 |
| 4 | Naval Academy | 38 |
| 5 | Istinye University | 32 |
| 6 | Western Caspian University | 28 |
| 7 | [Korea University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/korea-university.md) | 27 |
| 8 | [Lebanese American University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/lebanese-american-university.md) | 25 |
| 9 | [Sichuan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sichuan-university.md) | 20 |
| 10 | Istanbul Medipol University | 17 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 240 |
| 2 | Turkey | 201 |
| 3 | India | 156 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 110 |
| 5 | United States | 92 |
| 6 | Taiwan | 83 |
| 7 | Iran | 69 |
| 8 | Spain | 68 |
| 9 | Serbia | 56 |
| 10 | Italy | 54 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | TOPSIS | 102 |
| 2 | [sensitivity analysis](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/sensitivity-analysis.md) | 86 |
| 3 | criteria weighting | 79 |
| 4 | analytic hierarchy process | 76 |
| 5 | best-worst method | 56 |
| 6 | VIKOR | 47 |
| 7 | group decision making | 43 |
| 8 | supplier selection | 42 |
| 9 | decision support system | 34 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,439 | 17.4 | [Sustainable supplier selection in healthcare industries using a new MCDM method: Measurement of alternatives and ranking according to COmpromise solution (MARCOS)](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2019.106231) | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 2019-12-16 | Željko Stević, Dragan Stevan Pamucar, Adis Puška et al. |
| 2 | 1,428 | 18.3 | [Industry 4.0 technologies assessment: A sustainability perspective](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107776) | [International Journal of Production Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-production-economics.md) | 2020-05-06 | Chunguang April Bai, Patrick Dallasega, Guido Orzes et al. |
| 3 | 1,085 | 14.4 | [A review of fuzzy AHP methods for decision-making with subjective judgements](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2020.113738) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2020-07-19 | Yan Liu, Claudia Margot Eckert, Christopher Earl |
| 4 | 928 | 7.9 | [Fuzzy best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method and its applications](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2017.01.010) | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 2017-01-07 | Sen Guo, Haoran Zhao |
| 5 | 910 | 9.0 | [An approach toward decision-making and medical diagnosis problems using the concept of spherical fuzzy sets](https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-018-3521-2) | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 2018-05-18 | Tahir Mahmood, Kifayat Ullah, Qaisar Khan et al. |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Do multi-criteria rankings agree?](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/do-multi-criteria-rankings-agree.md)

## Cite this page

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

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