SDG 4: Quality education
Papers in the tracked journals on UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality education. OpenAlex assigns a paper to each UN Sustainable Development Goal that its classifier scores above 0.4 from the paper's text; a paper can belong to several goals or to none. Also as Markdown.
← All 17 goals · SDG 1 · SDG 2 · SDG 3 · SDG 4 · SDG 5 · SDG 6 · SDG 7 · SDG 8 · SDG 9 · SDG 10 · SDG 11 · SDG 12 · SDG 13 · SDG 14 · SDG 15 · SDG 16 · SDG 17
Key findings#
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 4 (Quality education) was addressed by 12,308 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in higher education and research (4,489), economics (3,095) and management (2,024).
- It is #9 of the 17 goals by papers from 2023 to 2025 (4,624).
- 1,766 of them were published in 2025, against 912 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were IZA - Institute of Labor Economics (84), Education University of Hong Kong (83) and University of Hong Kong (78).
- The journals publishing most of them were The International Journal of Management Education (664), Higher Education (598) and Computers and Education Artificial Intelligence (547).
- The most-cited of them is “Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education – where are the educators?” (International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2019), with 7,197 citations.
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Higher Education and Research | 308 | 327 | 334 | 339 | 408 | 492 | 418 | 612 | 680 | 571 |
| Economics | 291 | 296 | 255 | 276 | 313 | 318 | 361 | 338 | 375 | 272 |
| Management | 135 | 117 | 127 | 144 | 187 | 213 | 221 | 275 | 295 | 310 |
| AI | 33 | 28 | 30 | 58 | 65 | 120 | 123 | 154 | 201 | 220 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 49 | 35 | 45 | 50 | 54 | 33 | 48 | 52 | 48 | 26 |
| Operations Research | 20 | 17 | 25 | 34 | 28 | 28 | 41 | 34 | 27 | 34 |
| Information Systems | 39 | 32 | 25 | 19 | 19 | 18 | 23 | 20 | 35 | 34 |
| Accounting | 16 | 25 | 18 | 27 | 25 | 19 | 23 | 30 | 27 | 46 |
| Finance | 5 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 13 | 23 | 44 | 31 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 7 | 17 | 11 | 12 | 19 | 11 | 7 | 15 | 21 | 16 |
| Marketing | 9 | 5 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 7 | 9 | 15 | 10 | 6 |
| Statistics | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| All categories | 912 | 913 | 893 | 980 | 1,142 | 1,276 | 1,289 | 1,569 | 1,766 | 1,568 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The International Journal of Management Education | 664 |
| 2 | Higher Education | 598 |
| 3 | Computers and Education Artificial Intelligence | 547 |
| 4 | Economics of Education Review | 286 |
| 5 | Innovative Higher Education | 263 |
| 6 | International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education | 263 |
| 7 | Research in Higher Education | 167 |
| 8 | Expert Systems with Applications | 164 |
| 9 | Journal of Computing in Higher Education | 155 |
| 10 | Journal of Hospitality Leisure Sport & Tourism Education | 137 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | IZA - Institute of Labor Economics | 84 |
| 2 | Education University of Hong Kong | 83 |
| 3 | University of Hong Kong | 78 |
| 4 | Central China Normal University | 77 |
| 5 | Monash University | 71 |
| 6 | Peking University | 63 |
| 7 | Zhejiang University | 57 |
| 8 | University College London | 54 |
| 9 | Beijing Normal University | 52 |
| 10 | Chinese University of Hong Kong | 52 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 1,543 |
| 2 | China | 1,253 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 586 |
| 4 | Australia | 422 |
| 5 | Germany | 366 |
| 6 | Spain | 317 |
| 7 | Hong Kong | 261 |
| 8 | Italy | 249 |
| 9 | India | 206 |
| 10 | Canada | 202 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | higher education | 423 |
| 2 | university students | 395 |
| 3 | academic performance | 362 |
| 4 | entrepreneurship education | 277 |
| 5 | generative AI | 271 |
| 6 | student engagement | 267 |
| 7 | gender differences | 250 |
| 8 | COVID-19 pandemic | 233 |
| 9 | ChatGPT | 228 |
| 10 | online learning | 226 |
Most-cited papers#
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). SDG 4: Quality education. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/4-quality-education
@misc{scholar4ai-sdgs-4-quality-education,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {SDG 4: Quality education},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/4-quality-education}},
urldate = {2026-10-31},
note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}