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2025 Journal Impact Factor - 0.8
2025 CiteScore - 1.6
ISSN 2083-6473
ISSN 2083-6481 (electronic version)
Editor-in-Chief
Associate Editor
Prof. Tomasz Neumann
Published by
TransNav, Faculty of Navigation
Gdynia Maritime University
3, John Paul II Avenue
81-345 Gdynia, POLAND
e-mail transnav@umg.edu.pl
The Governance Lag in Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Growth, Themes and Gaps, 2010-2025
1 University of Split, Split, Croatia
ABSTRACT: Research on Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) has expanded rapidly, yet the operational introduction of autonomous vessels is widely held to depend less on technical capability than on risk governance, regulation and the human element. Whether the research effort reflects that dependency has not been tested. This study asks whether governance-oriented MASS research is keeping pace with technical research. A reproducible corpus of 1,874 peer-reviewed journal articles and reviews published between 2010 and 2025 was retrieved from the open OpenAlex database and screened transparently. Growth was modelled by log-linear regression, the intellectual base was identified by co-citation, the intellectual structure was mapped by keyword co-occurrence and Louvain clustering with a strategic diagram, and thematic composition was tracked across three periods. Comparative growth rates were then estimated for seven lexically defined topics. The field grew at 46.9 per cent per year between 2013 and 2025, doubling every 1.8 years. Its composition shifted decisively away from platform and propulsion engineering, which fell from 34.3 to 17.0 per cent of output, towards risk, safety, security and operations, which rose from 25.7 to 39.0 per cent. Against this, research on regulation, law and liability grew at only 16.9 per cent per year, less than half the rate of perception research, and its share fell after 2021 even as the International Maritime Organization advanced its MASS instrument. The field is consolidating around risk and operations while its regulatory foundations lag, which constitutes a measurable governance lag and the principal frontier for future work.
KEYWORDS: Risk Assessment, Maritime Safety, Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), Autonomous Ships, Regulatory Framework, Cybersecurity Challenges, Bibliometric Analysis, Human Factors
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Citation note:
Milin V., Ivančić P., Čorić M., Medić D.: The Governance Lag in Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Growth, Themes and Gaps, 2010-2025. TransNav, the International Journal on Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation, Vol. 20, No. 3, doi:10.12716/1001.20.03.19, pp. 723-735, 2026
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