---
title: "Random forest research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “random forest” appeared in 1,440 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (711), operations research (221) and economics (166)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/random-forest
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/random-forest.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 “random forest” appeared in 1,440 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (711), operations research (221) and economics (166). (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 “random forest”

Research on “random forest” 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 “random forest” appeared in 1,440 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (711), operations research (221) and economics (166).
- 228 of them were published in 2025, against 52 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (15), Kafrelsheikh University (10) and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (8).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (109), Neural Computing and Applications (82) and Computational Economics (41).
- The most-cited of them is “A comparative analysis of gradient boosting algorithms” (Artificial Intelligence Review, 2020), with 2,995 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) | 35 | 53 | 57 | 52 | 69 | 113 | 95 | 87 | 91 | 59 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 6 | 6 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 35 | 28 | 37 | 40 | 30 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 3 | 4 | 6 | 17 | 18 | 11 | 17 | 22 | 36 | 32 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 3 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 13 | 12 | 12 | 23 | 36 | 21 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 2 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 4 | 12 | 5 | 14 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 2 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 9 | 9 | 7 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 52 | 79 | 92 | 102 | 135 | 198 | 173 | 208 | 228 | 173 |

## 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) | 109 |
| 2 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 82 |
| 3 | [Computational Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computational-economics.md) | 41 |
| 4 | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 26 |
| 5 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 24 |
| 6 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 24 |
| 7 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 18 |
| 8 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 18 |
| 9 | [Decision Analytics Journal](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/decision-analytics-journal.md) | 18 |
| 10 | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 17 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 15 |
| 2 | Kafrelsheikh University | 10 |
| 3 | King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | 8 |
| 4 | [Universiti Sains Malaysia](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/universiti-sains-malaysia.md) | 8 |
| 5 | [Central South University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/central-south-university.md) | 6 |
| 6 | [Huazhong University of Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/huazhong-university-of-science-and-technology.md) | 6 |
| 7 | [Lebanese American University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/lebanese-american-university.md) | 6 |
| 8 | Mansoura University | 6 |
| 9 | New Mansoura University | 6 |
| 10 | [University of Twente](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-twente.md) | 6 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 163 |
| 2 | United States | 91 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 68 |
| 4 | Turkey | 66 |
| 5 | India | 63 |
| 6 | Spain | 42 |
| 7 | Germany | 41 |
| 8 | Italy | 41 |
| 9 | France | 38 |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | 33 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [XGBoost](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/xgboost.md) | 149 |
| 2 | [support vector machine](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/support-vector-machine.md) | 99 |
| 3 | [artificial neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/artificial-neural-networks.md) | 70 |
| 4 | [feature selection](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/feature-selection.md) | 67 |
| 5 | [SHAP](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/shap.md) | 65 |
| 6 | decision tree | 64 |
| 7 | [ensemble learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/ensemble-learning.md) | 63 |
| 8 | gradient boosting | 62 |
| 9 | [class imbalance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/class-imbalance.md) | 61 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,995 | 40.3 | [A comparative analysis of gradient boosting algorithms](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-020-09896-5) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2020-08-24 | Candice Bentéjac, Anna Csörgő, Gonzalo Martínez-Muñoz |
| 2 | 2,828 | 26.4 | [Deep learning with long short-term memory networks for financial market predictions](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.11.054) | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 2017-12-05 | Thomas Günter Fischer, Christopher Krauß |
| 3 | 1,561 | 17.5 | [A comparison of random forest variable selection methods for classification prediction modeling](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2019.05.028) | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 2019-05-23 | Jaime Lynn Speiser, Michael E. Miller, Janet Austin Tooze et al. |
| 4 | 1,068 | 17.7 | [A survey on missing data in machine learning](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00516-9) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2021-10-27 | Tlamelo Emmanuel, Thabiso Maupong, Dimane Mpoeleng et al. |
| 5 | 983 | 13.0 | [Selecting critical features for data classification based on machine learning methods](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-020-00327-4) | [Journal Of Big Data](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-big-data.md) | 2020-07-23 | Rung-Ching Chen, Christine Dewi, Su-Wen Huang et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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