---
title: "Research in August 2026: top topics and papers"
description: "In August 2026, the tracked journals published 3,853 papers (finance 550, accounting 57, economics 774, management 439, operations research 502, AI 1,531). The most frequent keywords were “large language models” (133), “China” (115) and “Chinese listed companies” (92)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2026-08
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2026-08.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "In August 2026, the tracked journals published 3,853 papers (finance 550, accounting 57, economics 774, management 439, operations research 502, AI 1,531)."
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 August 2026

What the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals published in August 2026, 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 August 2026, the tracked journals published 3,853 papers (finance 550, accounting 57, economics 774, management 439, operations research 502, AI 1,531).
- The most frequent keywords were “large language models” (133), “China” (115) and “Chinese listed companies” (92).
- Compared with their share in the twelve months before, the keywords that grew most were “multi-objective optimization” (49 papers, +19), “AI governance” (27 papers, +17) and “generative AI” (45 papers, +16).
- The institutions with the most papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (54), Tsinghua University (53) and Zhejiang University (45).
- China was involved in 45% of the papers.
- The most-cited paper published that month is “What drives virtual influencers’ impact?” (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science), with 25 citations so far.

## Papers by category

*Papers published in August 2026*

| Category | Papers |
|---|---:|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 550 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 57 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 774 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 439 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 502 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 1,531 |

## Top keywords

*Most frequent keywords, August 2026*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [large language models](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/large-language-models.md) | 133 |
| 2 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 115 |
| 3 | [Chinese listed companies](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/chinese-listed-companies.md) | 92 |
| 4 | [corporate governance](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/corporate-governance.md) | 62 |
| 5 | [graph neural networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/graph-neural-networks.md) | 56 |
| 6 | [financial constraints](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/financial-constraints.md) | 54 |
| 7 | [contrastive learning](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/contrastive-learning.md) | 52 |
| 8 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 51 |
| 9 | [artificial intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/artificial-intelligence.md) | 49 |
| 10 | class imbalance | 49 |
| 11 | multi-objective optimization | 49 |
| 12 | state-owned enterprises | 49 |
| 13 | [multimodal fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/multimodal-fusion.md) | 46 |
| 14 | generative AI | 45 |
| 15 | [information asymmetry](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/information-asymmetry.md) | 39 |

## Growing keywords

*Papers in August 2026 beyond the keyword's share in the twelve months before*

| Keyword | Papers | At earlier share | Extra papers |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| multi-objective optimization | 49 | 30.3 | +18.7 |
| AI governance | 27 | 10.3 | +16.7 |
| generative AI | 45 | 29.1 | +15.9 |
| transparency | 21 | 10.4 | +10.6 |
| accountability | 15 | 5.8 | +9.2 |
| greenwashing | 18 | 9.0 | +9.0 |
| digital infrastructure | 23 | 14.4 | +8.6 |
| mixture of experts | 20 | 11.7 | +8.3 |
| human-AI interaction | 16 | 8.0 | +8.0 |
| adversarial robustness | 19 | 11.4 | +7.6 |

## Top keywords by category

*The five most frequent keywords per category, August 2026*

| Category | Most frequent keywords |
|---|---|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | Chinese listed companies (69); China (46); financial constraints (38); corporate governance (34); state-owned enterprises (31) |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | corporate governance (9); Chinese listed companies (5); information asymmetry (5); emerging markets (4); state-owned enterprises (4) |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | China (57); energy transition (18); COVID-19 pandemic (16); economic growth (13); income inequality (13) |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | generative AI (20); consumer behavior (16); digital transformation (14); influencer marketing (11); resource-based view (11) |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | multi-objective optimization (29); mixed-integer linear programming (21); combinatorial optimization (13); distributionally robust optimization (12); large language models (12) |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | large language models (105); graph neural networks (53); contrastive learning (51); class imbalance (45); multimodal fusion (43) |

## Institutions

*Institutions with the most papers, August 2026*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 54 |
| 2 | [Tsinghua University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tsinghua-university.md) | 53 |
| 3 | [Zhejiang University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/zhejiang-university.md) | 45 |
| 4 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 42 |
| 5 | Harbin Institute of Technology | 41 |
| 6 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 41 |
| 7 | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | 41 |
| 8 | [Tongji University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/tongji-university.md) | 41 |
| 9 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 41 |
| 10 | [University of Electronic Science and Technology of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-electronic-science-and-technology-of-china.md) | 40 |

## Countries

*Countries, August 2026*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 1,733 |
| 2 | United States | 504 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 260 |
| 4 | Australia | 169 |
| 5 | Germany | 152 |
| 6 | India | 152 |
| 7 | Italy | 147 |
| 8 | Hong Kong | 126 |
| 9 | France | 120 |
| 10 | Canada | 112 |

## Journals

*Journals with the most papers, August 2026*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 356 |
| 2 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 205 |
| 3 | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 184 |
| 4 | [AI & Society](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ai-society.md) | 123 |
| 5 | [Neural Networks](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-networks.md) | 121 |
| 6 | [International Review of Economics & Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-economics-finance.md) | 112 |
| 7 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 106 |
| 8 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 104 |
| 9 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 68 |
| 10 | [Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-e-logistics-and-transportation-review.md) | 66 |

## Equations and models

*Most-mentioned equations and models, August 2026 (titles, abstracts and keywords)*

| # | Equation or model | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Linear and integer programming](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/linear-and-integer-programming.md) | 21 |
| 2 | [Graph neural network (graph convolution)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/graph-neural-network-graph-convolution.md) | 17 |
| 3 | [Scaled dot-product attention (Transformer)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/scaled-dot-product-attention-transformer.md) | 10 |
| 4 | [Gradient boosting (XGBoost)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/gradient-boosting-xgboost.md) | 7 |
| 5 | [Shapley value (SHAP)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/shapley-value-shap.md) | 6 |
| 6 | [Contrastive loss (InfoNCE)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/contrastive-loss-infonce.md) | 5 |
| 7 | [Convolutional neural network (CNN)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/convolutional-neural-network-cnn.md) | 5 |
| 8 | [Long short-term memory (LSTM)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/long-short-term-memory-lstm.md) | 4 |
| 9 | [Structural equation modeling (SEM)](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/structural-equation-modeling-sem.md) | 4 |
| 10 | [Difference-in-differences](https://scholar4ai.com/equations/difference-in-differences.md) | 3 |

## Datasets

*Most-mentioned datasets, August 2026 (titles, abstracts and keywords)*

| # | Dataset | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | YouTube / TikTok | 5 |
| 2 | CIFAR-10 / CIFAR-100 | 2 |
| 3 | KITTI | 2 |
| 4 | D4RL | 1 |
| 5 | Domain adaptation benchmarks (Office-31, Office-Home, VisDA, DomainNet) | 1 |
| 6 | Face recognition (LFW, CelebA, VGGFace2) | 1 |
| 7 | Fine-grained benchmarks (CUB-200, Stanford Cars, Oxford Flowers) | 1 |
| 8 | ImageNet | 1 |
| 9 | NASA C-MAPSS turbofan data | 1 |
| 10 | nuScenes / Waymo Open / Argoverse | 1 |

## Most-cited papers published in August 2026

*Most-cited papers published in August 2026 (citations counted by OpenAlex, updated daily)*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 | 9.9 | [What drives virtual influencers’ impact?](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-026-01185-x) | [Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-the-academy-of-marketing-science.md) | 2026-08-10 | Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo, Francisco Javier Villarroel Ordenes, Jonah A. Berger |
| 2 | 20 | 7.3 | [Sa2VA: Marrying SAM2 With MLLM for Dense Grounded Understanding of Images and Videos](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2026.3720379) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2026-08-04 | Haobo Yuan, Xiangtai Li, Tao Zhang et al. |
| 3 | 16 | 7.5 | [The Shapley value for airport and irrigation games](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10100-026-01039-5) | [Central European Journal of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/central-european-journal-of-operations-research.md) | 2026-08-22 | Judit Márkus, Miklós Pintér, Anna Radványi |
| 4 | 15 | 5.8 | [ResiDual: Transformer with dual residual connections](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2026.104602) | [Artificial Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence.md) | 2026-08-08 | Shufang Xie, Huishuai Zhang, Junliang Guo et al. |
| 5 | 15 | 5.6 | [Skilled foreign labor supply and corporate investment: Evidence from H-1B lotteries and application deadlines](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2026.103068) | [Journal of Corporate Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-corporate-finance.md) | 2026-08-06 | Sheng-Jun Xu |
| 6 | 14 | 5.3 | [Enhancing continuous auditing with large language models: AI-assisted real-time accounting information cross-verification](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2026.100786) | [International Journal of Accounting Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-accounting-information-systems.md) | 2026-08-06 | Huaxia Li, Marcelo Machado de Freitas, Heejae Lee et al. |
| 7 | 11 | 4.6 | [Evaluating the impact of dividend restrictions on euro area bank market values](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2026.103653) | [Journal of International Money and Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-international-money-and-finance.md) | 2026-08-14 | Desislava Andreeva, Paul Bochmann, Julius Schneider |
| 8 | 10 | 4.1 | [GaMeS: Mesh-based adapting and modification of Gaussian Splatting](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2026.114561) | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 2026-08-13 | Joanna Waczyńska, Piotr Borycki, Sławomir Tadeja et al. |
| 9 | 10 | 3.7 | [The impact of environmental regulation on clean innovation: Are there crowding out effects?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2026.109539) | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 2026-08-04 | Nicola Benatti, Martin Groiss, Petra Kelly et al. |
| 10 | 10 | 3.7 | [LLM Post-Training: A Deep Dive Into Reasoning Large Language Models](https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2026.3720414) | [IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence.md) | 2026-08-04 | Komal Kumar, Tajamul Ashraf, Omkar Thawakar et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Research published in August 2026. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 26, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2026-08

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-reports-2026-08,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Research published in August 2026},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/reports/2026-08}},
  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/).