Mapping the Maritime Economy: A Thematic Analysis of Research Trends and Emerging Directions
Keywords:
Maritime economy, Bibliometric analysis, Thematic clustering, Digitalisation, Decarbonisation, Port governance, Social network analysis, Sustainable blue economyAbstract
The maritime economy, a cornerstone of global trade and economic development, is undergoing rapid transformation driven by technological advancements, sustainability challenges, and evolving regulatory frameworks. This study systematically organizes and analyses 827 scientific articles from the Web of Science, employing a hybrid methodology integrating Social Network Analysis (SNA), the Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) clustering algorithm, and large language models (LLMs) to identify key research themes and emerging trends. Through an iterative "human-in-the-loop" process, we refine the clustering process, resulting in six main clusters and 26 subclusters spanning topics such as governance and strategic management, forecasting and modelling, port operations, digital innovations, sustainability, and risk management. The results reveal a marked shift toward sustainability-oriented and technology-driven research, emphasizing the convergence of environmental responsibility, digital transformation, and operational resilience. The findings also highlight the growing role of autonomous technologies, big data analytics, and blockchain in reshaping maritime systems, while underscoring the need for adaptive governance frameworks and cross-sectoral collaboration. By offering a structured, data-driven overview of the maritime research ecosystem, this study contributes a novel methodological framework for bibliometric exploration and provides actionable insights for scholars, policymakers, and industry stakeholders seeking to advance innovation and sustainability in the maritime domain.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Dragan Cisic, prof.dr.sc. Saša Drezgić, prof.dr.sc. Saša Čegar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Scientific Journal of Maritime Research understands the need for authors to disseminate and maximize the impact of their research. When submitting an article for publishing in Scientific Journal of Maritime Research, it implies that the Corresponding Author transfers, with the consent of all Coauthors, the copyright ownership in the referenced submission, including all versions in any format now known or hereafter developed, to the Scientific Journal of Maritime Research.
Copyright protects your original work and research material and prevents others from using it without your permission. Others will be required to credit you and your work properly, thus increasing its impact. Should your submission be rejected or withdrawn prior to acceptance for publication by Scientific Journal of Maritime Research, this transfer will be null and void.
Authors, users or readers of an article need clear instructions on how they can use the article. Scientific Journal of Maritime Research uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International License, which governs the use, publishing and distribution of articles by authors, publishers and the wider general public.
The authors are allowed to post a digital file of the published article, or the link to the published article (Scientific Journal of Maritime Research web page) may be made publicly available on websites or repositories, such as the Author’s personal website, preprint servers, university networks or primary employer’s institutional websites, third party institutional or subject-based repositories, and conference websites that feature presentations by the Author(s) based on the published article, under the condition that the article is posted in its unaltered Scientific Journal of Maritime Research form, exclusively for non-commercial purposes.
