Post-quantum cryptography

Encryption designed to stay secure against attacks by future quantum computers.

China leads post-quantum cryptography research, with 20.4% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; India is second with 12.5%.

This field publishes its leading work largely at conferences, so this technology counts journal articles, conference papers and preprints from any source, not only core journals. A paper posted as a preprint and later published can appear twice.

FirstChina20.4%

SecondIndia12.5%

1.6×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1CNChina20.4%2INIndia12.5%3USUnited States9.8%4SASaudi Arabia5.3%5KRSouth Korea4.3%6GBUnited Kingdom3.4%7–8JPJapan2.8%7–8DEGermany2.6%9AUAustralia2.5%10ESSpain2.2%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 338 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

About 68 papers a year. Single-year moves are noise.

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Hardware and software implementations (FPGA, NTT accelerators)	85	CNChina28.2%	USUnited States14.1%	KRSouth Korea5.0%
Quantum-safe authentication protocols (IoT, vehicles, health)	60	CNChina23.4%	INIndia23.1%	SASaudi Arabia11.3%
Post-quantum blockchain and distributed ledgers	53	INIndia20.1%	CNChina15.3%	USUnited States12.0%
Standardisation, migration and surveys	48	INIndia16.1%	USUnited States11.3%	CNChina8.3%
Homomorphic encryption and other lattice schemes	32	CNChina35.2%	INIndia10.7%	AUAustralia5.9%
Side-channel attacks, fault attacks and masking	29	USUnited States17.0%	BEBelgium13.2%	CNChina11.6%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

CNChina 25.9%17.1%−8.8 pts

INIndia 8.1%15.2%+7.1 pts

USUnited States 11.7%8.6%−3.1 pts

SASaudi Arabia 1.8%7.4%+5.5 pts

KRSouth Korea 5.4%3.7%−1.7 pts

GBUnited Kingdom 4.2%2.9%−1.3 pts

JPJapan 2.3%3.1%+0.8 pts

DEGermany 2.9%2.4%−0.5 pts

Greyed rows rest on fewer than five papers of credit in one period.

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 129 papers in 2021–2023, 209 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (2,041), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

INIndia11.5%of 2026 papers have an author here
CNChina10.4%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States6.0%of 2026 papers have an author here
GBUnited Kingdom2.9%of 2026 papers have an author here
KRSouth Korea2.6%of 2026 papers have an author here

With home citations removed

Home bias removed

Removes only the home citations above what the country's share of the field predicts. This is the fair test.

All citationsBias removedAll citationsBias removed

CNChina 20.4%18.7%

INIndia 12.5%9.7%

USUnited States 9.8%10.1%

SASaudi Arabia 5.3%4.4%

KRSouth Korea 4.3%5.0%

GBUnited Kingdom 3.4%3.6%

Every home citation removed

Removes all citations from a paper's own countries. A country that writes most of a field loses most, whatever its habits.

All citationsForeign onlyAll citationsForeign only

CNChina 20.4%17.1%

INIndia 12.5%8.8%

USUnited States 9.8%10.0%

SASaudi Arabia 5.3%4.4%

KRSouth Korea 4.3%6.3%

GBUnited Kingdom 3.4%3.8%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 338 papers in each version; both panels on the same scale. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

CNChina 44.7%18.6%+26.1

INIndia 44.4%11.8%+32.6

USUnited States 26.0%9.6%+16.4

SASaudi Arabia 33.9%2.8%+31.1

KRSouth Korea 34.3%4.4%+29.9

GBUnited Kingdom 34.4%4.2%+30.2

JPJapan 14.6%3.5%+11.1

DEGermany 23.8%3.6%+20.2

Every paper in the top 10%, counted once per citing paper. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1CNTsinghua University2.3%
2INVellore Institute of Technology University1.6%
3KRInha University1.3%
4USUniversity of South Florida1.3%
5CNNanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics1.2%
6JPUniversity of Electro-Communications1.1%
7CNNanjing University1.0%
8INInternational Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad0.9%
9TRSabancı Üniversitesi0.8%
10DETechnical University of Munich0.8%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	CN	IN	US
Universities	89.1%	89.0%	99.2%	90.3%
Research facilities	4.8%	8.2%	0%	0%
Companies	2.7%	0%	0%	2.8%
Government labs	1.5%	2.5%	0.8%	1.4%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

37.6% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

INSAIndia with Saudi Arabia11
INKRIndia with South Korea10
CNHKChina with Hong Kong9
CNGBChina with United Kingdom7
GBINUnited Kingdom with India7

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

A Compact Hardware Implementation of CCA-Secure Key Exchange Mechanism CRYSTALS-KYBER on FPGA
IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, 2021CN
218citations
A Survey of Post-Quantum Cryptography: Start of a New Race
Cryptography, 2023JPVN
183citations
Quantum2FA: Efficient Quantum-Resistant Two-Factor Authentication Scheme for Mobile Devices
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2021CN
178citations
Fast Strategies for the Implementation of SIKE Round 3 on ARM Cortex-M4
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I Regular Papers, 2021US
161citations
Post-Quantum Blockchain Security for the Internet of Things: Survey and Research Directions
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2024PT
147citations

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

"post-quantum" OR "quantum-resistant" OR "quantum-safe" OR "lattice-based cryptography" OR "learning with errors" OR "code-based cryptography" OR "isogeny-based"

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Cryptography and Data Security; Cryptography and Residue Arithmetic; Cryptographic Implementations and Security; Advanced Authentication Protocols Security; Blockchain Technology Applications and Security; Coding theory and cryptography. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 3,370
In the top 10%: 338
In the top 1%: 36
Countries with credit: 59
Credit with no known country: 6.7%

Every one of the 441 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 33 were left out as not about post-quantum cryptography

The most cited of those left out:

How to issue a central bank digital currency101 citations
Decentralization Using Quantum Blockchain: A Theoretical Analysis77 citations
The Future of Cybersecurity in the Age of Quantum Computers66 citations
A survey on security and cryptographic perspective of Industrial-Internet-of-Things65 citations
A Comprehensive Review on Cryptographic Techniques for Securing Internet of Medical Things: A State-of-the-Art, Applications, Security Attacks, Mitigation Measures, and Future Research Direction48 citations
Decentralized trust framework for smart cities: a blockchain-enabled cybersecurity and data integrity model41 citations
Proteus: A Pipelined NTT Architecture Generator40 citations
Enhancing Data Security through Advanced Cryptographic Techniques39 citations
Ligero: lightweight sublinear arguments without a trusted setup37 citations
Encryption techniques for financial data security in fintech applications36 citations
Challenges in making blockchain privacy compliant for the digital world: some measures35 citations
Configurable Encryption and Decryption Architectures for CKKS-Based Homomorphic Encryption30 citations

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method