Remote Sensing Publications 1961-2023 – Analysis of National and Global Trends

Remote sensing underpins significant twenty-first century technical capabilities and innovations. Thus, understanding the technical expertise and financial drivers of the field are of national and international importance, as they are inextricably linked with intellectual property generation. Using 126,479 peer-reviewed, journal papers and their affiliated funder information from 2 major publication databases, this study benchmarks current practices, documents historical shifts, and identifies emerging directions in the remote sensing industry and academic publishing. In 70 years, the field has gone from producing barely a dozen scholarly papers a year to more than 13,000 annually without an equivalent growth in publication venues but with a jump in the mean number of authors from 3 to 5 in less than 25 years. The largest contributor (research and funding) is China, which rapidly ascended since 2000 to now dominate the field with a near majority stake. China’s dominance of 47% of all remote sensing journal papers worldwide is mirrored in affiliated patents.