mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Bibliometric Review of Large Language Models Research from 2017 to 2023

arXiv 2304.02020 ↗First posted 3 Apr 2023cs.DL cs.CL cs.CYcited by 56

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Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) are a class of language models that have demonstrated outstanding performance across a range of natural language processing (NLP) tasks and have become a highly sought-after research area, because of their ability to generate human-like language and their potential to revolutionize science and technology. In this study, we conduct bibliometric and discourse analyses of scholarly literature on LLMs. Synthesizing over 5,000 publications, this paper serves as a roadmap for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to navigate the current landscape of LLMs research. We present the research trends from 2017 to early 2023, identifying patterns in research paradigms and collaborations. We start with analyzing the core algorithm developments and NLP tasks that are fundamental in LLMs research. We then investigate the applications of LLMs in various fields and domains including medicine, engineering, social science, and humanities. Our review also reveals the dynamic, fast-paced evolution of LLMs research. Overall, this paper offers valuable insights into the current state, impact, and potential of LLMs research and its applications.

Key facts. Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 35 of its 94 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2023.

Builds on

35 of 94 references.

References · 35

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  3. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  4. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  5. 2019RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approachcited by 13,266
  6. 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,049
  7. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  8. 2021On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Modelscited by 3,961
  9. 2014Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networkscited by 2,974
  10. 2019XLNet: Generalized Autoregressive Pretraining for Language Understandingcited by 2,801
  11. 2023A Survey of Large Language Modelscited by 2,537
  12. 2022Emergent Abilities of Large Language Modelscited by 2,483
23 more
  1. 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
  2. 2019Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using Model Parallelismcited by 1,829
  3. 2019SciBERT: A Pretrained Language Model for Scientific Textcited by 1,404
  4. 2022LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applicationscited by 1,218
  5. 2023HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Facecited by 1,173
  6. 2020Domain-Specific Language Model Pretraining for Biomedical Natural Language Processingcited by 996
  7. 2021Ethical and social risks of harm from Language Modelscited by 957
  8. 2022BERTopic: Neural topic modeling with a class-based TF-IDF procedurecited by 779
  9. 2019Is BERT Really Robust? A Strong Baseline for Natural Language Attack on Text Classification and Entailmentcited by 663
  10. 2021Prompt Programming for Large Language Models: Beyond the Few-Shot Paradigmcited by 599
  11. 2019FinBERT: Financial Sentiment Analysis with Pre-trained Language Modelscited by 378
  12. 2021Persistent Anti-Muslim Bias in Large Language Modelscited by 376
  13. 2020Med-BERT: pre-trained contextualized embeddings on large-scale structured electronic health records for disease predictioncited by 368
  14. 2020BERTweet: A pre-trained language model for English Tweetscited by 346
  15. 2023GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Modelscited by 174
  16. 2019FlauBERT: Unsupervised Language Model Pre-training for Frenchcited by 153
  17. 2019Pre-training of Graph Augmented Transformers for Medication Recommendationcited by 124
  18. 2021What Changes Can Large-scale Language Models Bring? Intensive Study on HyperCLOVA: Billions-scale Korean Generative Pretrained Transformerscited by 75
  19. 2021Mitigating Political Bias in Language Models Through Reinforced Calibrationcited by 73
  20. 2021MMBERT: Multimodal BERT Pretraining for Improved Medical VQAcited by 68
  21. 2019Pretraining-Based Natural Language Generation for Text Summarizationcited by 40
  22. 2020Generating Major Types of Chinese Classical Poetry in a Uniformed Frameworkcited by 12
  23. 2021The Privatization of AI Research(-ers): Causes and Potential Consequences -- From university-industry interaction to public research brain-drain?cited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 17; 2024: 21; 2025: 11; 2026: 7.

56 papers.

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  1. 2025Multi-Agent Collaboration Mechanisms: A Survey of LLMscited by 424
  2. 2023Large Language Models for Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Reviewcited by 389
  3. 2023Foundational Models Defining a New Era in Vision: A Survey and Outlookcited by 109
  4. 2023NPHardEval: Dynamic Benchmark on Reasoning Ability of Large Language Models via Complexity Classescited by 78
  5. 2023Foundational Models in Medical Imaging: A Comprehensive Survey and Future Visioncited by 74
  6. 2023A Comprehensive Survey on Segment Anything Model for Vision and Beyondcited by 64
  7. 2023"HOT" ChatGPT: The promise of ChatGPT in detecting and discriminating hateful, offensive, and toxic comments on social mediacited by 45
  8. 2023chatClimate: Grounding Conversational AI in Climate Sciencecited by 32
  9. 2024BattleAgent: Multi-modal Dynamic Emulation on Historical Battles to Complement Historical Analysiscited by 20
  10. 2025Understanding the LLM-ification of CHI: Unpacking the Impact of LLMs at CHI through a Systematic Literature Reviewcited by 16
  11. 2023Can LLMs like GPT-4 outperform traditional AI tools in dementia diagnosis? Maybe, but not todaycited by 14
  12. 2024Simulated patient systems powered by large language model-based AI agents offer potential for transforming medical educationcited by 13
38 more
  1. 2023Explore the Potential of LLMs in Misinformation Detection: An Empirical Studycited by 11
  2. 2024WorldMedQA-V: a multilingual, multimodal medical examination dataset for multimodal language models evaluationcited by 11
  3. 2023CORE-GPT: Combining Open Access research and large language models for credible, trustworthy question answeringcited by 10
  4. 2023Evaluation of AI Chatbots for Patient-Specific EHR Questionscited by 9
  5. 2024Large Language Models in Biomedical and Health Informatics: A Review with Bibliometric Analysiscited by 9
  6. 2024Financial Sentiment Analysis on News and Reports Using Large Language Models and FinBERTcited by 9
  7. 2023ChatGPT-Like Large-Scale Foundation Models for Prognostics and Health Management: A Survey and Roadmapscited by 8
  8. 2024An Exploratory Investigation into Code License Infringements in Large Language Model Training Datasetscited by 8
  9. 2024Evaluating Cultural Awareness of LLMs for Yoruba, Malayalam, and Englishcited by 8
  10. 2024Exploring the Potential of Large Language Models for Improving Digital Forensic Investigation Efficiencycited by 7
  11. 2023ChatGPT v Bard v Bing v Claude 2 v Aria v human-expert. How good are AI chatbots at scientific writing?cited by 6
  12. 2025QuIM-RAG: Advancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Inverted Question Matching for Enhanced QA Performancecited by 6
  13. 2024NPHardEval4V: Dynamic Evaluation of Large Vision-Language Models with Effects of Visioncited by 5
  14. 2024Segment Anything for Videos: A Systematic Surveycited by 5
  15. 2025Towards Alignment-Centric Paradigm: A Survey of Instruction Tuning in Large Language Modelscited by 5
  16. 2023Utilizing ChatGPT to Enhance Clinical Trial Enrollmentcited by 4
  17. 2024KAHANI: Culturally-Nuanced Visual Storytelling Tool for Non-Western Culturescited by 4
  18. 2023PharmacyGPT: The AI Pharmacistcited by 3
  19. 2023ArcGPT: A Large Language Model Tailored for Real-world Archival Applicationscited by 3
  20. 2024Clean Evaluations on Contaminated Visual Language Modelscited by 3
  21. 2024PrecLLM: A Privacy-Preserving Framework for Efficient Clinical Annotation Extraction from Unstructured EHRs using Small-Scale LLMscited by 3
  22. 2025Analyzing 16,193 LLM Papers for Fun and Profitscited by 3
  23. 2023DataChat: Prototyping a Conversational Agent for Dataset Search and Visualizationcited by 2
  24. 2024What We Talk About When We Talk About LMs: Implicit Paradigm Shifts and the Ship of Language Modelscited by 2
  25. 2024From Cool Demos to Production-Ready FMware: Core Challenges and a Technology Roadmapcited by 2
  26. 2025Delta-KNN: Improving Demonstration Selection in In-Context Learning for Alzheimer's Disease Detectioncited by 2
  27. 2024EXACT-Net:EHR-guided lung tumor auto-segmentation for non-small cell lung cancer radiotherapycited by 1
  28. 2024ChatTracer: Large Language Model Powered Real-time Bluetooth Device Tracking Systemcited by 1
  29. 2024Toxic Subword Pruning for Dialogue Response Generation on Large Language Modelscited by 1
  30. 2025YouLeQD: Decoding the Cognitive Complexity of Questions and Engagement in Online Educational Videos from Learners' Perspectivescited by 1
  31. 2025Using (Not-so) Large Language Models to Generate Simulation Models in a Formal DSL: A Study on Reaction Networkscited by 1
  32. 2025The Role of Computing Resources in Publishing Foundation Model Researchcited by 1
  33. 2026The Shrinking Lifespan of LLMs in Sciencecited by 1
  34. 2026GRID: Graph Representation of Intelligence Data for Security Text Knowledge Graph Constructioncited by 1
  35. 2024Evaluating the Efficacy of Foundational Models: Advancing Benchmarking Practices to Enhance Fine-Tuning Decision-Makingcited by 0
  36. 2024VSLLaVA: a pipeline of large multimodal foundation model for industrial vibration signal analysiscited by 0
  37. 2024Dhoroni: Exploring Bengali Climate Change and Environmental Views with a Multi-Perspective News Dataset and Natural Language Processingcited by 0
  38. 2025LLM-Based Design Pattern Detectioncited by 0

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