---
title: "Online learning research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “online learning” appeared in 1,173 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (568), higher education and research (303) and management (88)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/online-learning
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/online-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 “online learning” appeared in 1,173 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (568), higher education and research (303) and management (88). (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 “online learning”

Research on “online 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 “online learning” appeared in 1,173 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (568), higher education and research (303) and management (88).
- 132 of them were published in 2025, against 64 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Zhejiang University (11), Beijing University of Technology (10) and Central China Normal University (9).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (39), The International Journal of Management Education (36) and Journal of Computing in Higher Education (30).
- The most-cited of them is “A Survey on Multi-Task Learning” (IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2021), with 2,909 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) | 37 | 46 | 57 | 51 | 52 | 89 | 56 | 63 | 69 | 48 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 19 | 25 | 20 | 20 | 38 | 60 | 36 | 28 | 36 | 21 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 2 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 15 | 15 | 21 | 13 | 7 | 5 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 11 | 13 | 15 | 8 | 3 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 2 | 12 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 64 | 100 | 88 | 95 | 131 | 191 | 146 | 134 | 132 | 92 |

## 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) | 39 |
| 2 | [The International Journal of Management Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/the-international-journal-of-management-education.md) | 36 |
| 3 | [Journal of Computing in Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-computing-in-higher-education.md) | 30 |
| 4 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 29 |
| 5 | [International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-educational-technology-in-higher-education.md) | 25 |
| 6 | [The Internet and Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/the-internet-and-higher-education.md) | 23 |
| 7 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 19 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 19 |
| 9 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 15 |
| 10 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 15 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 11 |
| 2 | [Beijing University of Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-university-of-technology.md) | 10 |
| 3 | [Central China Normal University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/central-china-normal-university.md) | 9 |
| 4 | [Nanyang Technological University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanyang-technological-university.md) | 8 |
| 5 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 7 |
| 6 | [Purdue University West Lafayette](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/purdue-university-west-lafayette.md) | 7 |
| 7 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 7 |
| 8 | [University of Technology Sydney](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-technology-sydney.md) | 7 |
| 9 | [Chongqing University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chongqing-university.md) | 6 |
| 10 | [Fuzhou University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/fuzhou-university.md) | 6 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 186 |
| 2 | United States | 92 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 33 |
| 4 | Australia | 31 |
| 5 | Hong Kong | 21 |
| 6 | Spain | 19 |
| 7 | Italy | 17 |
| 8 | India | 16 |
| 9 | Germany | 15 |
| 10 | Singapore | 15 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 85 |
| 2 | data streams | 44 |
| 3 | [higher education](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/higher-education.md) | 41 |
| 4 | [student engagement](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/student-engagement.md) | 37 |
| 5 | [academic performance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/academic-performance.md) | 27 |
| 6 | [university students](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/university-students.md) | 26 |
| 7 | concept drift | 24 |
| 8 | blended learning | 18 |
| 9 | regret bounds | 16 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 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 |
| 2 | 1,231 | 16.4 | [Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on information management research and practice: Transforming education, work and life](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102211) | [International Journal of Information Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-information-management.md) | 2020-07-31 | Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi, D. Laurie Hughes, Crispin R. Coombs et al. |
| 3 | 963 | 9.3 | [Online learning in higher education: exploring advantages and disadvantages for engagement](https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-018-9179-z) | [Journal of Computing in Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-computing-in-higher-education.md) | 2018-04-02 | Amber D. Dumford, Angie L. Miller |
| 4 | 951 | 12.4 | [COVID-19 and digital disruption in UK universities: afflictions and affordances of emergency online migration](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00561-y) | [Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/higher-education.md) | 2020-06-03 | Richard Watermeyer, Tom Crick, Cathryn Knight et al. |
| 5 | 816 | 7.2 | [Adaptive random forests for evolving data stream classification](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10994-017-5642-8) | [Machine Learning](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/machine-learning.md) | 2017-06-13 | Heitor Murilo Gomes, Albert Bifet, Jesse Read et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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