---
title: "Quality-adjusted life years research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “quality-adjusted life years” appeared in 1,039 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,025), operations research (7) and economics (7)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/quality-adjusted-life-years
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/quality-adjusted-life-years.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 “quality-adjusted life years” appeared in 1,039 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,025), operations research (7) and economics (7). (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 “quality-adjusted life years”

Research on “quality-adjusted life years” 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 “quality-adjusted life years” appeared in 1,039 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in health economics and policy (1,025), operations research (7) and economics (7).
- 124 of them were published in 2025, against 72 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were University of Sheffield (23), University of Oxford (20) and University of York (20).
- The journals publishing most of them were Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation (114), PharmacoEconomics (106) and PharmacoEconomics - Open (92).
- The most-cited of them is “Perspective and Costing in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, 1974–2018” (PharmacoEconomics, 2020), with 279 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 71 | 83 | 93 | 85 | 107 | 103 | 106 | 120 | 122 | 135 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| All categories | 72 | 84 | 93 | 86 | 110 | 105 | 107 | 122 | 124 | 136 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/cost-effectiveness-and-resource-allocation.md) | 114 |
| 2 | [PharmacoEconomics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pharmacoeconomics.md) | 106 |
| 3 | [PharmacoEconomics - Open](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pharmacoeconomics-open.md) | 92 |
| 4 | [The European Journal of Health Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/the-european-journal-of-health-economics.md) | 58 |
| 5 | [Applied Health Economics and Health Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-health-economics-and-health-policy.md) | 56 |
| 6 | [Health Economics Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/health-economics-review.md) | 46 |
| 7 | [Health Policy and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/health-policy-and-technology.md) | 5 |
| 8 | [Journal of Health Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-health-economics.md) | 2 |
| 9 | [Health Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/health-policy.md) | 2 |
| 10 | [Socio-Economic Planning Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/socio-economic-planning-sciences.md) | 1 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [University of Sheffield](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-sheffield.md) | 23 |
| 2 | [University of Oxford](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-oxford.md) | 20 |
| 3 | [University of York](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-york.md) | 20 |
| 4 | [Erasmus University Rotterdam](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/erasmus-university-rotterdam.md) | 16 |
| 5 | [Monash University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/monash-university.md) | 13 |
| 6 | [The University of Melbourne](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/the-university-of-melbourne.md) | 11 |
| 7 | [University of Technology Sydney](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-technology-sydney.md) | 11 |
| 8 | [Maastricht University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/maastricht-university.md) | 10 |
| 9 | [University College London](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-college-london.md) | 10 |
| 10 | University Medical Center Groningen | 10 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | United Kingdom | 130 |
| 2 | United States | 99 |
| 3 | China | 57 |
| 4 | Netherlands | 54 |
| 5 | Australia | 47 |
| 6 | Canada | 38 |
| 7 | Spain | 30 |
| 8 | Switzerland | 28 |
| 9 | Germany | 26 |
| 10 | Sweden | 21 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [cost-effectiveness](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/cost-effectiveness.md) | 373 |
| 2 | [Markov model](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/markov-model.md) | 100 |
| 3 | incremental cost-effectiveness ratio | 93 |
| 4 | willingness-to-pay threshold | 58 |
| 5 | cost-utility analysis | 55 |
| 6 | [health care costs](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/health-care-costs.md) | 53 |
| 7 | [health technology assessment](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/health-technology-assessment.md) | 45 |
| 8 | [health-related quality of life](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/health-related-quality-of-life.md) | 35 |
| 9 | first-line therapy | 29 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 279 | 3.7 | [Perspective and Costing in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, 1974–2018](https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-020-00942-2) | [PharmacoEconomics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pharmacoeconomics.md) | 2020-07-22 | David D. Kim, Madison C. Silver, Natalia Kunst et al. |
| 2 | 235 | 2.2 | [Estimating the Reference Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio for the Australian Health System](https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-017-0585-2) | [PharmacoEconomics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pharmacoeconomics.md) | 2017-12-22 | Laura Catherine Edney, Hossein Haji Ali Afzali, Terence Chai Cheng et al. |
| 3 | 206 | 2.0 | [Cost-Effectiveness Thresholds: the Past, the Present and the Future](https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-017-0606-1) | [PharmacoEconomics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pharmacoeconomics.md) | 2018-02-09 | Praveen Thokala, Jessica Ochalek, Ashley A. Leech et al. |
| 4 | 193 | 2.8 | [The Danish EQ-5D-5L Value Set: A Hybrid Model Using cTTO and DCE Data](https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-021-00639-3) | [Applied Health Economics and Health Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-health-economics-and-health-policy.md) | 2021-02-01 | Cathrine Elgaard Jensen, Sabrina Storgaard Sørensen, Claire M. Gudex et al. |
| 5 | 157 | 1.5 | [Estimating the returns to United Kingdom publicly funded musculoskeletal disease research in terms of net value of improved health outcomes](https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-017-0276-7) | [Health Research Policy and Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/health-research-policy-and-systems.md) | 2018-01-09 | Matthew J Glover, Erin Montague, Alexandra Pollitt et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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