---
title: "Research in December 2024: top topics and papers"
description: "In December 2024, the tracked journals published 3,965 papers (finance 588, accounting 54, economics 829, management 407, operations research 460, AI 1,627). The most frequent keywords were “China” (136), “Chinese listed companies” (91) and “state-owned enterprises” (70)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2024-12
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2024-12.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "In December 2024, the tracked journals published 3,965 papers (finance 588, accounting 54, economics 829, management 407, operations research 460, AI 1,627)."
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-10-26T18:01:08+09:00
window: 2026-09-27 to 2026-10-26
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Research published in December 2024

What the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals published in December 2024, by publication date in OpenAlex. This page is a fixed monthly record: its address does not change. Counts can still grow a little as late papers are indexed, and citations are updated daily.

## Key findings

- In December 2024, the tracked journals published 3,965 papers (finance 588, accounting 54, economics 829, management 407, operations research 460, AI 1,627).
- The most frequent keywords were “China” (136), “Chinese listed companies” (91) and “state-owned enterprises” (70).
- Compared with their share in the twelve months before, the keywords that grew most were “regional heterogeneity” (59 papers, +32), “large language models” (44 papers, +21) and “convolutional neural networks” (47 papers, +18).
- The institutions with the most papers were Tsinghua University (61), Chinese Academy of Sciences (57) and Southeast University (57).
- China was involved in 47% of the papers.

## Papers by category

*Papers published in December 2024*

| Category | Papers |
|---|---:|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 588 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 54 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 829 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 407 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 460 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 1,627 |

## Top keywords

*Most frequent keywords, December 2024*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 136 |
| 2 | [Chinese listed companies](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/chinese-listed-companies.md) | 91 |
| 3 | state-owned enterprises | 70 |
| 4 | [financial constraints](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/financial-constraints.md) | 68 |
| 5 | [corporate governance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/corporate-governance.md) | 65 |
| 6 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 63 |
| 7 | regional heterogeneity | 59 |
| 8 | attention mechanism | 58 |
| 9 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 56 |
| 10 | [information asymmetry](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/information-asymmetry.md) | 49 |
| 11 | convolutional neural networks | 47 |
| 12 | feature selection | 46 |
| 13 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 44 |
| 14 | multi-objective optimization | 43 |
| 15 | class imbalance | 42 |

## Growing keywords

*Papers in December 2024 beyond the keyword's share in the twelve months before*

| Keyword | Papers | At earlier share | Extra papers |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| regional heterogeneity | 59 | 27.3 | +31.7 |
| [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 44 | 22.9 | +21.1 |
| convolutional neural networks | 47 | 29.3 | +17.7 |
| recurrent neural networks | 23 | 8.1 | +14.9 |
| self-supervised learning | 40 | 25.3 | +14.7 |
| energy efficiency | 29 | 15.3 | +13.7 |
| graph convolutional networks | 36 | 23.2 | +12.8 |
| time series forecasting | 22 | 10.3 | +11.7 |
| lightweight neural networks | 21 | 10.8 | +10.2 |
| climate risk | 22 | 12.8 | +9.2 |

## Top keywords by category

*The five most frequent keywords per category, December 2024*

| Category | Most frequent keywords |
|---|---|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | Chinese listed companies (64); state-owned enterprises (50); China (49); financial constraints (46); corporate governance (45) |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | corporate governance (8); COVID-19 pandemic (3); corporate social responsibility (3); corporate social responsibility disclosure (3); earnings management (3) |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | China (76); COVID-19 pandemic (25); regional heterogeneity (24); developing countries (19); Chinese listed companies (16) |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | corporate social responsibility (17); purchase intention (13); consumer behavior (12); influencer marketing (12); innovation (12) |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | multi-objective optimization (23); mixed-integer linear programming (14); demand uncertainty (12); social welfare (welfare economics) (11); supply chain coordination (11) |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | attention mechanism (57); graph neural networks (53); convolutional neural networks (44); large language models (39); class imbalance (38) |

## Institutions

*Institutions with the most papers, December 2024*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 61 |
| 2 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 57 |
| 3 | [Southeast University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southeast-university.md) | 57 |
| 4 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 52 |
| 5 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 47 |
| 6 | [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 45 |
| 7 | Sun Yat-sen University | 45 |
| 8 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 43 |
| 9 | South China University of Technology | 41 |
| 10 | Harbin Institute of Technology | 38 |

## Countries

*Countries, December 2024*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 1,844 |
| 2 | United States | 551 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 324 |
| 4 | Australia | 196 |
| 5 | India | 189 |
| 6 | Germany | 179 |
| 7 | Italy | 171 |
| 8 | France | 167 |
| 9 | Spain | 116 |
| 10 | Canada | 114 |

## Journals

*Journals with the most papers, December 2024*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 348 |
| 2 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 260 |
| 3 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 187 |
| 4 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 177 |
| 5 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 120 |
| 6 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 114 |
| 7 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 79 |
| 8 | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 75 |
| 9 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 68 |
| 10 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 63 |

## Equations and models

*Most-mentioned equations and models, December 2024 (titles, abstracts and keywords)*

| # | Equation or model | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Scaled dot-product attention (Transformer)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/scaled-dot-product-attention-transformer.md) | 141 |
| 2 | [Graph neural network (graph convolution)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/graph-neural-network-graph-convolution.md) | 124 |
| 3 | [Convolutional neural network (CNN)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/convolutional-neural-network-cnn.md) | 89 |
| 4 | [Contrastive loss (InfoNCE)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/contrastive-loss-infonce.md) | 67 |
| 5 | [Linear and integer programming](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/linear-and-integer-programming.md) | 56 |
| 6 | [Long short-term memory (LSTM)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/long-short-term-memory-lstm.md) | 44 |
| 7 | [Mediation model (indirect effect)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/mediation-model-indirect-effect.md) | 28 |
| 8 | [Support vector machine (SVM)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/support-vector-machine-svm.md) | 28 |
| 9 | [Generative adversarial network (GAN)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/generative-adversarial-network-gan.md) | 26 |
| 10 | [Gradient boosting (XGBoost)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/gradient-boosting-xgboost.md) | 25 |

## Datasets

*Most-mentioned datasets, December 2024 (titles, abstracts and keywords)*

| # | Dataset | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Twitter / X | 22 |
| 2 | Economic Policy Uncertainty index | 20 |
| 3 | S&P 500 | 10 |
| 4 | China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) | 8 |
| 5 | Climate Policy Uncertainty index | 8 |
| 6 | ImageNet | 8 |
| 7 | China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) | 7 |
| 8 | CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100 | 6 |
| 9 | Facebook | 5 |
| 10 | MS COCO | 5 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Research published in December 2024. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 26, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2024-12

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-reports-2024-12,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Research published in December 2024},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2024-12}},
  urldate = {2026-10-26},
  note = {Journal 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/).