Ocean economic activities rely on scientific knowledge and on the policies that foster its creation, diffusion and application. This chapter examines the ocean science, technology and innovation (STI) systems that underpin all parts of the ocean economy discussed in later chapters from two separate angles. The first is ocean-related scientific publications identified in a large international bibliographic database. The second is STI policies related to the ocean economy recorded in the EC-OECD STIP Compass.
The Ocean Economy at a Glance
Abstract
The volume of ocean-related scientific publications kept pace with all scientific publications between 1996 and 2024, but its growth slowed after 2019. The number of ocean-related publications reached 65 641 in 2024, 4.6 times the 1996 number, and remained around 1.5% of all publications throughout the period.
Most ocean scientific publications are now produced outside the OECD area, with the People’s Republic of China taking the lead. Non-OECD economies have published more ocean science than the OECD area in every year since 2021.
The topics of ocean science shifted from marine life and the physical ocean towards engineering and technology. Underwater acoustics, sensing, communications and robotics became the largest theme in 2024. Offshore wind, wave and tidal energy and ‘desalination and water-treatment technologies grew fastest. Non-OECD Asia specialises in these engineering themes.
Science, technology and innovation (STI) policies for the ocean economy are a small part of STI policy recorded in the EC-OECD STIP Compass and they address net zero transitions far more often than STI policies in general. They make up 4.4% of the initiatives that the countries and the EU report to the EC-OECD STIP Compass, 87 dedicated to the ocean and 300 broader policies containing ocean-related components. 47.8% of them address net zero transitions, compared with 15.7% of all initiatives.
Specialisation in ocean scientific publications and in the ocean STI policies recorded in the EC-OECD STIP Compass are both associated with a country’s dependence on the ocean economy. Norway is highest on both measures, with 28.9% of its gross value added from the ocean economy and 16.4% of its STI policy initiatives on the ocean.
Ocean-related publications increased 4.6 times between 1996 and 2024, a little faster than scientific publications as a whole (Figure 2.1). They remained around 1.5% of all publications throughout the period. Globally, 14 221 ocean publications were published in 1996 and 65 641 in 2024. The ocean share of all publications moved from 1.41% to a peak of 1.62% in 2013 and 1.52% in 2024. Ocean publications grew by 6.0% a year in the 1996-2008 period and by 6.1% a year in the 2008-2019 period, faster than all publications, but by 3.5% a year in the 2019-2024 period compared with 4.5% for all publications. Most of the growth in ocean science therefore reflects the growth of research in general, and the slowdown after 2019 coincides with the fall in the OECD area’s output (see Figure 2.2).
Ocean publications, plus their share of all publications, %, plus the annual growth of ocean publications and of all publications, %, 1996-2024
Note: Panel A shows the number of ocean publications. Panel B shows ocean publications as a share of all publications with the dotted line marking the year of the highest share in 2013. Panel C shows the annual growth of ocean publications and of all publications. Ocean publications are delimited by a keyword search on titles, abstracts and author keywords in English-language records only with one set of search terms for each ocean economic activity group and one for marine science in general.
Source: OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026.
Non-OECD Asia’s share of world ocean publications increased from 6.6% in 1996 to 47.3% in 2024, making it the largest producing region since 2017 (Figure 2.2). It passed the OECD Americas in 2013 and OECD Europe in 2017. The OECD area’s ocean publications peaked in 2019 and non-OECD economies together have published more ocean science than the OECD area in every year since 2021. The OECD area’s share of world ocean publications fell from 84.4% to 42.7% between 1996 and 2024, the OECD Americas’ from 37.0% to 13.6%, and OECD Europe’s from 33.8% to 20.3%. Non-OECD Asia gained the most share during the 2008-2019 period with 17.5 percentage points (p.p.) and then a further 13.5 p.p. in the 2019-2024 period. The production of ocean science has therefore moved mainly to Asia outside the OECD area.
Regional groups’ shares of world ocean publications, %, 1996, 2008, 2019 and 2024, plus ocean publications of OECD and non-OECD economies, fractional counts, 1996-2024
Note: Regional groups are the UN M49 regions split by OECD membership. Panel A shows each group’s share of world ocean publications at the start and end of each of the three periods. Panel B shows the ocean publications of the OECD area and of non-OECD economies, with the dotted line marking the first year in which non-OECD economies published more than the OECD area in 2021. Fractional counts divide each publication among the institutional affiliations of its authors.
Source: OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026.
The People’s Republic of China (hereafter “China”) became the largest producer of ocean scientific publications in 2018 (Figure 2.3). It produced 30.9% of world ocean publications in 2024, up from 1.7% in 1996 when it was 13th among economies. India, 12th among economies in 1996, was third in 2024 after passing the United Kingdom in 2020, Indonesia rose from 48th to fifth. Japan, Italy, the Russian Federation, Germany and Australia complete the ten largest producers, six of which are OECD Members. The economies that rose furthest in the ranking are in Asia.
Ten largest producers of ocean publications in 2024, fractional counts, 1996 and 2024
Note: The chart ranks economies by their ocean publications in 2024 given by the filled circle, with their 1996 ocean publications as the unfilled circle and their 1996 rank among economies in brackets. Economies that are not identified separately in the experimental ocean economy supply and use tables are not ranked. Dark markers indicate OECD Members. Fractional counts divide each publication among the institutional affiliations of its authors.
Source: OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026.
Offshore wind, wave and tidal energy and desalination and water-treatment technologies grew fastest of all themes detected in ocean science between 1996 and 2024 (Figure 2.4). Publications on offshore wind, wave and tidal energy grew by 16.0% a year and those on desalination and water-treatment technologies by 13.5% a year, compared with 6.3% for all themes. Five themes related to marine life published less in 2024 than in 2020. In the 2020-2024 period, coral, benthic and organismal ecology decreased by 2.5% a year, after growing by 3.2% a year in the 2015-2019 period. Underwater acoustics, sensing, communications and robotics grew fastest between 2020 and 2024 period by 16.3% a year. Growth after 2020 was therefore concentrated even more in themes concerning ocean engineering and technology.
Average annual growth of publications in each theme, %, fractional counts, 1996-2024
Note: The chart shows average annual growth between 1996 and 2024. The grey bar refers to all publications assigned to a theme. The themes originate in a model which groups ocean scientific publications into topics by the content of their titles and abstracts. The 304 topics detected by the model were then grouped into 24 themes. Fractional counts divide each publication among the institutional affiliations of its authors.
Source: OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026.
Non-OECD Asia specialises in the engineering themes of ocean science while the OECD Oceania and OECD Americas specialise in marine life (Figure 2.5). Between 2020 and 2024, underwater acoustics, sensing, communications and robotics took 1.6 times as large a share of non-OECD Asia’s ocean publications as of the world’s. Marine structures, materials and geotechnical engineering was 1.6 times higher and desalination and water-treatment technologies 1.5 times higher. Non-OECD Asia produced 43% of world ocean publications in the period, more than any other region, but its specialisation index in marine wildlife biology and conservation was only 0.19. OECD Oceania’s index was 2.8 in coral, benthic and organismal ecology and the OECD Americas’ 2.3 in marine wildlife biology and conservation.
Specialisation index of each region in each theme, fractional counts, 2020-2024
Note: Each cell gives the theme’s share of the region’s ocean publications divided by its share of world ocean publications. A specialisation index above 1 means that the theme takes a larger share of the region’s ocean publications than of the world’s. Blue cells are below 1 and red cells above 1. An empty cell means that the region has no publication in the theme. The themes originate in a model which groups ocean scientific publications into topics by the content of their titles and abstracts. The 304 topics detected by the model were then grouped into 24 themes. Regional groups are the UN M49 regions split by OECD membership. Shares are calculated of the publications assigned to a theme. Fractional counts divide each publication among the institutional affiliations of its authors.
Source: OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026
The bibliometrics presented in this chapter are derived from OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026. The final ocean-related subset contains over two million unique documents in total across the time period for an average of roughly 70 000 records per year. They cover the years 1996 to 2024 and are limited to unique documents in the Scopus Custom Data with a title or abstract in English.
The ocean-related subset of documents was delimited using a structured query based on separate blocks of keyword terms for each ocean economic activity group plus marine science in general. Keyword terms were matched as whole words in titles, abstracts and author-provided keywords. Documents containing unambiguously ocean-related terms such as “marine sediments”, “offshore wind”, and “seafood” were considered in scope of ocean-related literature if these terms were present in any field of their record. Ambiguous terms such as “ship” only indicated a document is in-scope if they appear in an abstract alongside ocean-related anchor words such as “ocean”, “maritime”, or “Arctic”. The query was revised after manual inspection of a random sample of the matched documents. Certain terms such as “bulk carrier” (which describes a type of large vessel in maritime transport but is also found in a large number of engineering publications concerning semiconductors) were excluded after this process to reduce false positives.
Each document considered to be in-scope of ocean-related literature based on the keyword search was then attributed to economies using authors' affiliation records. The coverage was aligned with that of the OECD estimates of ocean economic activities. Documents are attributed to individual economies fractionally. A document is shared across the economies present in its author affiliations so that the total count associated with a document always equals one. Fractional counts were aggregated by economy, region, and other groupings. The ocean-related aggregates were then compared with the same calculations carried out on the full set of English-language documents in Scopus Custom Data to get shares of the total output of scientific literature.
A statistical technique called topic modelling was then used to compare the contents of ocean-related documents to each other in order to estimate the indicators ocean-related research themes. Topic models help to classify documents on similar subjects as related to each other even when they use different wording. Each topic is described by the words that most distinguish it from others. One topic, for example, included the terms “eDNA”, “metabarcoding”, “environmental DNA”, “species”, and “fish”. All resulting topics were reviewed manually using their top terms, closest neighbouring topics, and document titles. Each topic was given a descriptive name on this basis. The topic containing the terms in the example above was given the label “Environmental DNA and eDNA metabarcoding”. All the topics were then grouped manually into broader themes covering related topics based on their similarity to each other. The “Environmental DNA and eDNA metabarcoding” topic, for instance, was grouped with several others to create the theme labelled “Marine taxonomy, genetics and biodiversity methods”. The indicators based on topic themes were then aggregated following the same fractional counting rules outlined above.
Science, technology and innovation (STI) policies for the ocean economy address net zero transitions three times more than STI policies in general (Figure 2.6). Across the 63 countries and the EU that report to the EC-OECD STIP Compass, 387 of the 8 819 policy initiatives are either dedicated to the ocean or are a broader policy with an explicit ocean component. This represents 4.4% of the total initiatives in the database. Net zero transitions are addressed by 47.8% of the ocean-related policies (46.0% among dedicated ocean STI policies and 48.3% among broader ones), compared with 15.7% of all STIP Compass initiatives, often as part of broader climate policies. Among the survey’s STI policy themes, four of the five that are represented more strongly in ocean initiatives than rest concern net zero transitions. The share of net zero transitions in food and agriculture in ocean-related policies is 4.8 times the share among all STIP Compass initiatives. Targeted support to small and medium-sized enterprises and young innovative enterprises is among the least common themes in both dedicated and broader ocean-related policies. The ocean STI policies in the EC-OECD STIP Compass are therefore framed more often as part of the transition to net zero than as support for the research workforce or for young firms.
Initiatives that address each policy area, % of initiatives, dedicated and broader ocean-related STI policies and all STIP Compass initiatives
Note: The chart shows the share of initiatives that address each of the survey’s seven policy areas. Dedicated ocean STI policies have the ocean as their principal purpose. Broader STI policies have one explicit ocean objective, instrument, facility, workstream or targeted sector among others. The shares cover all the countries and the EU that report to the STIP Compass. An initiative can address several policy areas, so the shares sum to more than 100%.
Source: EC-OECD (2025), STIP Compass: International Database on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP), edition October 2026, https://stip.oecd.org.
Dedicated ocean STI policies favour collaborative infrastructures, while broader STI policies with an explicit ocean component rely more on governance instruments (Figure 2.7). Both combine more instruments per initiative than STI policies in general. Collaborative infrastructures, which include research infrastructures, networks and data services, are used by 28.7% of dedicated ocean STI policy initiatives, compared with 18.0% of all STIP Compass initiatives and 17.3% of broader ones. Governance instruments are used by 69.3% of broader initiatives, compared with 48.4% of all initiatives. The ocean STI policies in the EC-OECD STIP Compass therefore appear to have a particularly strong focus on building capacity for research (e.g. such as large-scale scientific equipment, specialised databases, supercomputing facilities, and demonstration plants) as well coordination across organisations than the general population of initiatives.
Initiatives that use each instrument family, % of initiatives, dedicated and broader ocean STI policies and all STIP Compass initiatives
Note: The chart shows the share of initiatives that use at least one instrument of each of the survey’s five instrument families. An initiative can use several instrument families so the shares sum to more than 100%. Initiatives are counted once each, whatever the number of instruments they use.
Source: EC-OECD (2025), STIP Compass: International Database on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP), edition October 2026, https://stip.oecd.org.
Economies whose ocean economy accounts for a larger share of gross value added (GVA) tend to specialise more in ocean science and to have entered more ocean-related STI policy initiatives to the EC-OECD STIP Compass (Figure 2.8). In 2024, ocean science was a smaller share of publications than the ocean economy was of overall economy GVA in 70 economies. It was a larger share in 13. The gap was widest where the ocean economy is largest, with the ocean economy at 28.9% of GVA and ocean science at 5.9% of publications in Norway. Among the countries that report to the STIP Compass, a country with an ocean economy share 10 p.p. higher tended to have a 4.2 p.p. higher share of its STI policy initiatives related to the ocean. Norway is highest on both measures, with 16.4% of its STI policy initiatives either dedicated to the ocean or containing an explicit ocean component.
Ocean share of each economy’s publications, fractional counts, %, against the ocean economy’s share of its gross value added, current prices, %, 2024
Note: The chart shows each economy identified separately in the experimental ocean economy supply and use tables with the dashed line marking equal shares. Gross value added is given at basic prices in current prices. The two sources are joined for 2024, the latest year present in the both the publications database and the supply and use tables. Economies that are not identified separately in the experimental ocean economy supply and use tables are not ranked. Dark markers indicate OECD Members. Fractional counts divide each publication among the institutional affiliations of its authors.
Source: OECD calculations based on Scopus Custom Data, Elsevier, Version 1.2026, April 2026, and OECD (2026), OCEANSTAT: OECD estimates of ocean economic activity.
Further reading
IOC-UNESCO (2026), Global Ocean Science Report 2026: Investing in Sustainable Ocean Solutions, Executive Summary, IOC Policy Series 2026-2. https://doi.org/10.71245/MSEK9116
Lévy, M. et al. (2026), “The 2026 Starfish Barometer”, State of the Planet, Vol. 7-osr10, Copernicus Publications, https://doi.org/10.5194/sp-7-osr10-1-2026.
Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) (2026), Global Ocean Observing System - Status Report 2025, https://www.ocean-ops.org/goosreport/#home.
OECD (2025), The Ocean Economy to 2050, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/a9096fb1-en
Jolly, C., Jolliffe, J. and Abdallah, C. (2025), "From Ocean Observation to Socio-Economic Benefits: Mapping the Value Chains of Open Marine Data", One Ocean Science Congress 2025. https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-363
Jolliffe, J. and K. Aben Athar (2024), “Understanding the contribution of Flanders’ public marine data to society”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2024/04, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/da9d7b66-en
Stevens, B., C. Jolly and J. Jolliffe (2021), “A new era of digitalisation for ocean sustainability?: Prospects, benefits, challenges”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 111, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a4734a65-en
OECD (2019), Rethinking Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264311053-en.