Naver’s AI research papers ranked as the world’s sixth most cited in 2022

[Data captured from Zeta Alpha]

Naver Corp.’s research reports on artificial intelligence have become the world’s sixth most cited in papers last year, according to industry sources on Thursday, quoting data from global AI research analysis platform Zeta Alpha.

Zeta Alpha’s list of the top 100 cited AI research papers last year, based on the number of citations, shows that Naver papers ranked as the sixth most cited, more than research bodies from major U.S. technology giants, including Intel Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. and Google LLC.

Naver published 107 regular papers in global top-tier academic journals last year and its papers were cited more than 8,000 times, a count based on the number of citations in Google Scholar.

The publisher of the most cited body of research last year was OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, followed by non-profit organization EleutherAI, which focuses on hyperscale AI ethics. Chinese AI startup Megvii, Deepmind Technologies Ltd. and Meta Platforms were third, fourth and fifth.

“Given that the top most cited publishers were mostly research-focused entities, we believe that our achievement has some implications, as we operate AI services for the public,” Naver said. “Also, we proved with the citation count that our research capacity is as advanced as those at global giants, like Meta or Google.”

Many of the AI technologies that have been subjects of Naver research have already been commercially applied to its services, including speech recording service Clova Note and emergency call service Clova Care Call, as well as automatic search keyword correction and product recommendations.

The IT giant plans to unveil a new generative AI-applied service called SearchGPT sometime in the first half. In July, Naver will release Hyper Clova X, an upgraded hyperscale AI of its previous Hyper Clova, as the firm seeks synergies across the AI industry.

“We have a built-in strength thanks to our unique structure of research, development and service,” said Ha Jung-woo, head of the company’s AI lab. “We can discover and define certain challenge or phenomenon that is worth pursing further as we apply new technology into our services, and we apply solutions that we have come up from our own lab back to our services, thereby carrying out a sustainable cycle of research, development and investment.”