---
title: "Research in April 2025: top topics and papers"
description: "In April 2025, the tracked journals published 3,755 papers (finance 564, accounting 57, economics 772, management 429, operations research 447, AI 1,486). The most frequent keywords were “China” (112), “Chinese listed companies” (89) and “financial constraints” (68)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2025-04
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2025-04.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "In April 2025, the tracked journals published 3,755 papers (finance 564, accounting 57, economics 772, management 429, operations research 447, AI 1,486)."
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-10-26T14:52:47+09:00
window: 2026-09-27 to 2026-10-26
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Research published in April 2025

What the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals published in April 2025, 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 April 2025, the tracked journals published 3,755 papers (finance 564, accounting 57, economics 772, management 429, operations research 447, AI 1,486).
- The most frequent keywords were “China” (112), “Chinese listed companies” (89) and “financial constraints” (68).
- Compared with their share in the twelve months before, the keywords that grew most were “large language models” (63 papers, +27), “moderating effect” (60 papers, +21) and “reinforcement learning” (33 papers, +14).
- The institutions with the most papers were Hong Kong Polytechnic University (61), Chinese Academy of Sciences (54) and Xi'an Jiaotong University (53).
- China was involved in 46% of the papers.
- The most-cited paper published that month is “A comprehensive survey of loss functions and metrics in deep learning” (Artificial Intelligence Review), with 395 citations so far.

## Papers by category

*Papers published in April 2025*

| Category | Papers |
|---|---:|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 564 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 57 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 772 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 429 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 447 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 1,486 |

## Top keywords

*Most frequent keywords, April 2025*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 112 |
| 2 | [Chinese listed companies](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/chinese-listed-companies.md) | 89 |
| 3 | [financial constraints](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/financial-constraints.md) | 68 |
| 4 | state-owned enterprises | 65 |
| 5 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 63 |
| 6 | [corporate governance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/corporate-governance.md) | 62 |
| 7 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 60 |
| 8 | moderating effect | 60 |
| 9 | attention mechanism | 49 |
| 10 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 49 |
| 11 | [artificial intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/artificial-intelligence.md) | 41 |
| 12 | convolutional neural networks | 41 |
| 13 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 40 |
| 14 | [digital transformation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/digital-transformation.md) | 40 |
| 15 | [emerging markets](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/emerging-markets.md) | 39 |

## Growing keywords

*Papers in April 2025 beyond the keyword's share in the twelve months before*

| Keyword | Papers | At earlier share | Extra papers |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 63 | 36.3 | +26.7 |
| moderating effect | 60 | 39.3 | +20.7 |
| reinforcement learning | 33 | 19.2 | +13.8 |
| Mamba | 13 | 2.1 | +10.9 |
| vision transformer | 25 | 14.9 | +10.1 |
| catastrophic forgetting | 20 | 10.4 | +9.6 |
| particle swarm optimization | 20 | 10.5 | +9.5 |
| continual learning | 17 | 7.6 | +9.4 |
| model compression | 17 | 7.7 | +9.3 |
| energy efficiency | 26 | 17.2 | +8.8 |

## Top keywords by category

*The five most frequent keywords per category, April 2025*

| Category | Most frequent keywords |
|---|---|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | Chinese listed companies (64); China (53); financial constraints (48); corporate governance (42); state-owned enterprises (38) |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | corporate governance (9); Chinese listed companies (4); state-owned enterprises (4); voluntary disclosure (4); disclosure regulation (3) |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | China (48); COVID-19 pandemic (21); economic growth (20); energy transition (18); state-owned enterprises (17) |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | moderating effect (18); consumer behavior (16); digital transformation (16); small and medium-sized enterprises (16); mediating effect (14) |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | mixed-integer linear programming (17); multi-objective optimization (14); Benders decomposition (12); demand uncertainty (11); distributionally robust optimization (11) |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | large language models (57); graph neural networks (48); attention mechanism (46); contrastive learning (40); convolutional neural networks (36) |

## Institutions

*Institutions with the most papers, April 2025*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 61 |
| 2 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 54 |
| 3 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 53 |
| 4 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 51 |
| 5 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 49 |
| 6 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 42 |
| 7 | Harbin Institute of Technology | 41 |
| 8 | [Beihang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beihang-university.md) | 38 |
| 9 | [Tianjin University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tianjin-university.md) | 38 |
| 10 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 38 |

## Countries

*Countries, April 2025*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 1,741 |
| 2 | United States | 579 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 331 |
| 4 | Australia | 186 |
| 5 | Germany | 176 |
| 6 | India | 155 |
| 7 | Italy | 153 |
| 8 | France | 148 |
| 9 | Hong Kong | 138 |
| 10 | Spain | 114 |

## Journals

*Journals with the most papers, April 2025*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 444 |
| 2 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 162 |
| 3 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 150 |
| 4 | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 101 |
| 5 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 94 |
| 6 | [International Review of Financial Analysis](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-financial-analysis.md) | 84 |
| 7 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 80 |
| 8 | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 78 |
| 9 | [Computers & Industrial Engineering](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computers-industrial-engineering.md) | 77 |
| 10 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 74 |

## Equations and models

*Most-mentioned equations and models, April 2025 (titles, abstracts and keywords)*

| # | Equation or model | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Scaled dot-product attention (Transformer)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/scaled-dot-product-attention-transformer.md) | 147 |
| 2 | [Graph neural network (graph convolution)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/graph-neural-network-graph-convolution.md) | 102 |
| 3 | [Convolutional neural network (CNN)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/convolutional-neural-network-cnn.md) | 88 |
| 4 | [Linear and integer programming](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/linear-and-integer-programming.md) | 71 |
| 5 | [Contrastive loss (InfoNCE)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/contrastive-loss-infonce.md) | 67 |
| 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) | 38 |
| 8 | [Structural equation modeling (SEM)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/structural-equation-modeling-sem.md) | 29 |
| 9 | [Generative adversarial network (GAN)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/generative-adversarial-network-gan.md) | 27 |
| 10 | [Random forest](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/random-forest.md) | 23 |

## Datasets

*Most-mentioned datasets, April 2025 (titles, abstracts and keywords)*

| # | Dataset | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Economic Policy Uncertainty index | 19 |
| 2 | Twitter / X | 11 |
| 3 | ImageNet | 10 |
| 4 | CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100 | 9 |
| 5 | S&P 500 | 9 |
| 6 | Climate Policy Uncertainty index | 6 |
| 7 | MIMIC | 6 |
| 8 | China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) | 5 |
| 9 | MNIST / Fashion-MNIST | 5 |
| 10 | MS COCO | 5 |

## Most-cited papers published in April 2025

*Most-cited papers published in April 2025 (citations counted by OpenAlex, updated daily)*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 395 | 21.4 | [A comprehensive survey of loss functions and metrics in deep learning](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-025-11198-7) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2025-04-11 | Juan R. Terven, Diana Margarita Córdova Esparza, Julio-Alejandro Romero-González et al. |
| 2 | 272 | 14.7 | [MB-TaylorFormer V2: Improved Multi-Branch Linear Transformer Expanded by Taylor Formula for Image Restoration](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2025.3559891) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2025-04-10 | Zhi Juan Jin, Yuwei Qiu, Kaihao Zhang et al. |
| 3 | 270 | 14.9 | [A comprehensive survey of deep learning for time series forecasting: architectural diversity and open challenges](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-025-11223-9) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2025-04-23 | Jongseon Kim, Hyungjoon Kim, HyunGi Kim et al. |
| 4 | 216 | 12.1 | [Artificial intelligence and machine learning in cybersecurity: a deep dive into state-of-the-art techniques and future paradigms](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-025-02429-y) | [Knowledge and Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-and-information-systems.md) | 2025-04-30 | Nachaat AbdElatif Mohamed |
| 5 | 214 | 11.8 | [The transparency dilemma: How AI disclosure erodes trust](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2025.104405) | [Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/organizational-behavior-and-human-decision-processes.md) | 2025-04-23 | Oliver S. Schilke, Martin Reimann |
| 6 | 207 | 11.1 | [HyperSIGMA: Hyperspectral Intelligence Comprehension Foundation Model](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2025.3557581) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2025-04-08 | Di Wang, Meiqi Hu, Yao Jin et al. |
| 7 | 149 | 8.1 | [LLDiffusion: Learning degradation representations in diffusion models for low-light image enhancement](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2025.111628) | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 2025-04-11 | Tao Wang, Kaihao Zhang, Yong Zhang et al. |
| 8 | 131 | 7.0 | [Can green finance policy promote inclusive green growth?- Based on the quasi-natural experiment of China's green finance reform and innovation pilot zone](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iref.2025.104090) | [International Review of Economics & Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-economics-finance.md) | 2025-04-03 | Aiting Xu, Yujie Dai, Zhiyuan Hu et al. |
| 9 | 128 | 7.0 | [The Animated Oat Optimization Algorithm: A nature-inspired metaheuristic for engineering optimization and a case study on Wireless Sensor Networks](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2025.113589) | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 2025-04-18 | Ruo-Bin Wang, Rui-Bin Hu, Fang‐Dong Geng et al. |
| 10 | 122 | 6.5 | [TransXNet: Learning Both Global and Local Dynamics With a Dual Dynamic Token Mixer for Visual Recognition](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2025.3550979) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2025-04-03 | Meng Lou, Shu Zhang, Hong-Yu Zhou et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Research published in April 2025. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 26, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2025-04

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-reports-2025-04,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Research published in April 2025},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2025-04}},
  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/).