Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo
Our attention was captured this week by a fascinating paper published earlier this year in the Geomatics journal, by Laefer and Hua, entitled ‘Remote Sensing Publications 1961–2023—Analysis of National and Global Trends’.
The researchers, from New York University, have analysed 126,479 peer-reviewed scientific papers published in journals over a sixty-year period that included the terms ‘remote sensing’ and/or ‘photogrammetry’. This work enabled them to look at how publication trends have evolved over the periods.
The data was sourced from the online platform Engineering Village that lists all major publishers and professional societies for science and engineering publications, and includes two-sub databases:
- Compendex includes journals from major publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, and MDPI – organisations we know well as, for example, an imprint of Taylor and Francis has published both editions of our Practical Handbook of Remote Sensing; alongside professional societies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and others; and
- Inspec was created by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), with a narrower focus on publications related to physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computers and information technology.
The research reported exponential growth in papers over the period, with less than 15 papers per year between 1961–1970, growing to 13,456 per year between 2021–2023. Clearly, this also matches the growth of the satellite industry with the first satellite launched in 1957 to having almost 3,000 satellites launched each year in 2023 and 2024. The authors also highlight the changing scientific and technology trends contributing to the growth with lower technology costs, digital only publishing and the use of machine learning.
Results
The fascinating part of the results is the change in the geographic layout of where the papers were published from, and below are two tables looking at the top three countries in percentage terms, alongside the total number of countries who had publication in the period, and finally looking specifically at the UK position.
There are several clear and obvious trends emerging from these decadal snapshots:
- The global growth of research with 3000% increase in the number of countries who have researchers publishing remote sensing papers; and this now covers almost every country on the planet.
- Rise of Chinese researchers in the field, with China having been nowhere in the first four decades to leading research in twenty years and dominating in recent years.
- Decline of the USA mirrors China’s rise – although given that the high bar that the USA began with it was inevitable that their percentage of research papers would drop, but it seems to have fallen a long way and given the current President’s view of Earth Observation, it is likely that this decline will not be arrested anytime soon.
- India’s research community has been increasing steadily – effectively matching their space industry – beginning in 1971 -1980 with 2%, and then 4% in the following three periods, before moving up to five percent in the final two; and being the third largest publisher over the most recent period.
The UK has consistently ranked in the top five countries, but there does seem to be decline over the last two periods in percentage terms, which for a company working within the field of remote sensing in the UK is concerning.
The authors themselves also note changing global publication trend is matched in funding terms, with Chinese funders acknowledged in more than 53% of publications from 2021 to 2023, which will not be a surprise to regular blog readers given the number of times we report on a Chinese Earth Observation (EO) satellite launches. What is more positive is that the authors also note a steady increase in the number of authors per paper, which has doubled in only 30 years and appears to be continuing upwards implying the increased use of collaboration within the sector, which can only be good thing.
Summary
We have talked several times on the blog on the changing global power for EO, and the opportunities this might offer. This paper gives an objective overview of that change and confirms what everyone already knew; namely China was the global leader. Although, given the limited collaboration and data availability for western scientists, again it seems to offer Europe a possibility to take a step forward in this field, given the USA’s current views on the sector.
