---
title: "Multi-task learning research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “multi-task learning” appeared in 1,128 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,069), operations research (31) and higher education and research (9)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-task-learning
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-task-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 “multi-task learning” appeared in 1,128 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,069), operations research (31) and higher education and research (9). (as of 2026-11-04)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-04T00:03:46+09:00
window: 2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “multi-task learning”

Research on “multi-task 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 “multi-task learning” appeared in 1,128 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (1,069), operations research (31) and higher education and research (9).
- 229 of them were published in 2025, against 23 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (35), Harbin Institute of Technology (24) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (23).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (156), Knowledge-Based Systems (87) and Pattern Recognition (70).
- The most-cited of them is “Learning without Forgetting” (IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2017), with 4,192 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) | 23 | 29 | 41 | 77 | 99 | 123 | 148 | 158 | 218 | 153 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 11 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 23 | 31 | 41 | 78 | 105 | 124 | 157 | 171 | 229 | 169 |

## 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) | 156 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 87 |
| 3 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 70 |
| 4 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 43 |
| 5 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 42 |
| 6 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 41 |
| 7 | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 34 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 33 |
| 9 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 28 |
| 10 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 25 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 35 |
| 2 | [Harbin Institute of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/harbin-institute-of-technology.md) | 24 |
| 3 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 23 |
| 4 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 20 |
| 5 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 20 |
| 6 | [Shanghai Jiao Tong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-jiao-tong-university.md) | 19 |
| 7 | [Tianjin University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tianjin-university.md) | 18 |
| 8 | [University of Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 16 |
| 9 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 16 |
| 10 | [Nanyang Technological University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanyang-technological-university.md) | 15 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 534 |
| 2 | United States | 53 |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 50 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 35 |
| 5 | India | 31 |
| 6 | Singapore | 28 |
| 7 | South Korea | 21 |
| 8 | Australia | 20 |
| 9 | Italy | 18 |
| 10 | Japan | 17 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [attention mechanism](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/attention-mechanism.md) | 35 |
| 2 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 35 |
| 3 | [multimodal fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multimodal-fusion.md) | 28 |
| 4 | [self-supervised learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/self-supervised-learning.md) | 25 |
| 5 | [semantic segmentation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/semantic-segmentation.md) | 24 |
| 6 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 22 |
| 7 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 21 |
| 8 | [knowledge distillation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/knowledge-distillation.md) | 17 |
| 9 | [transformer models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/transformer-models.md) | 17 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4,192 | 39.0 | [Learning without Forgetting](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2017.2773081) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2017-11-14 | Zhizhong Li, Derek Hoiem |
| 2 | 2,909 | 43.3 | [A Survey on Multi-Task Learning](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2021.3070203) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2021-03-31 | Yu Zhang, Qiang Yang |
| 3 | 1,743 | 27.4 | [Text Data Augmentation for Deep Learning](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00492-0) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2021-07-19 | Connor Shorten, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, Borko Furht |
| 4 | 1,332 | 12.5 | [HyperFace: A Deep Multi-Task Learning Framework for Face Detection, Landmark Localization, Pose Estimation, and Gender Recognition](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2017.2781233) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2017-12-08 | Rajeev Ranjan, Vishal M. Patel, Rama Chellappa |
| 5 | 879 | 11.5 | [Deep semantic segmentation of natural and medical images: a review](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-020-09854-1) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2020-06-13 | Saeid Asgari Taghanaki, Kumar Abhishek, Joseph Cohen et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “multi-task learning”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-task-learning

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-multi-task-learning,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “multi-task learning”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multi-task-learning}},
  urldate = {2026-11-04},
  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/).