---
title: "Social networks research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “social networks” appeared in 1,831 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (626), economics (544) and management (217)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-networks
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-networks.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 “social networks” appeared in 1,831 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (626), economics (544) and management (217). (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 “social networks”

Research on “social networks” 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 “social networks” appeared in 1,831 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in AI (626), economics (544) and management (217).
- 209 of them were published in 2025, against 175 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Sichuan University (16), Zhejiang University (16) and Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (15).
- The journals publishing most of them were Expert Systems with Applications (54), IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (30) and Information Fusion (25).
- The most-cited of them is “Graph embedding techniques, applications, and performance: A survey” (Knowledge-Based Systems, 2018), with 1,801 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) | 58 | 50 | 70 | 64 | 77 | 70 | 66 | 62 | 66 | 43 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 60 | 47 | 49 | 55 | 60 | 55 | 53 | 53 | 64 | 48 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 19 | 34 | 21 | 13 | 24 | 21 | 23 | 20 | 26 | 16 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 16 | 16 | 11 | 17 | 19 | 13 | 14 | 22 | 16 | 13 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 3 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 6 | 10 | 17 | 17 | 10 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 9 | 8 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 2 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 2 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 3 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| All categories | 175 | 171 | 186 | 176 | 210 | 181 | 186 | 194 | 209 | 143 |

## 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) | 54 |
| 2 | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 30 |
| 3 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 25 |
| 4 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 21 |
| 5 | [Information Processing & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-processing-management.md) | 17 |
| 6 | [Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-economic-behavior-organization.md) | 16 |
| 7 | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 15 |
| 8 | [Journal of Business Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-research.md) | 14 |
| 9 | [Games and Economic Behavior](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/games-and-economic-behavior.md) | 14 |
| 10 | [International Review of Economics & Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-economics-finance.md) | 14 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Sichuan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sichuan-university.md) | 16 |
| 2 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 16 |
| 3 | [Southwestern University of Finance and Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southwestern-university-of-finance-and-economics.md) | 15 |
| 4 | [Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanjing-university-of-information-science-and-technology.md) | 13 |
| 5 | [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 11 |
| 6 | [Fudan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/fudan-university.md) | 11 |
| 7 | [Shanghai Maritime University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/shanghai-maritime-university.md) | 10 |
| 8 | [University of Amsterdam](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-amsterdam.md) | 9 |
| 9 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 8 |
| 10 | De Montfort University | 8 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 320 |
| 2 | United States | 128 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 70 |
| 4 | Australia | 43 |
| 5 | Germany | 40 |
| 6 | France | 39 |
| 7 | Spain | 38 |
| 8 | India | 38 |
| 9 | Italy | 31 |
| 10 | Hong Kong | 30 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | information dissemination | 44 |
| 2 | [social capital](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-capital.md) | 33 |
| 3 | influence maximization | 30 |
| 4 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 28 |
| 5 | opinion dynamics | 28 |
| 6 | consensus reaching | 25 |
| 7 | group decision making | 25 |
| 8 | network centrality | 22 |
| 9 | community detection | 20 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,801 | 17.4 | [Graph embedding techniques, applications, and performance: A survey](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2018.03.022) | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 2018-03-16 | Palash Goyal, Emilio Ferrara |
| 2 | 661 | 6.3 | [Influence Maximization on Social Graphs: A Survey](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2018.2807843) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2018-02-22 | Yuchen Li, Ju Fan, Yanhao Wang et al. |
| 3 | 460 | 5.4 | [The future of in-store technology](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00697-z) | [Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-the-academy-of-marketing-science.md) | 2019-10-11 | Dhruv Grewal, Stephanie M. Noble, Anne L. Roggeveen et al. |
| 4 | 441 | 4.3 | [Attributed Social Network Embedding](https://doi.org/10.1109/tkde.2018.2819980) | [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-knowledge-and-data-engineering.md) | 2018-03-27 | Lizi Liao, Xiangnan He, Hanwang Zhang et al. |
| 5 | 388 | 3.5 | [A minimum adjustment cost feedback mechanism based consensus model for group decision making under social network with distributed linguistic trust](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2017.09.012) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2017-09-16 | Jian Wu, Lifang Dai, Francisco Chiclana et al. |

## Cite this page

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

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