Digital mapping of the blue economy: data -driven insights into research trends and funding flows

Purpose This paper aims to digitally map the dynamic landscape of blue economy research and explore the potentials of bibliometric and data mining methodologies. It analyses the intersection of academic knowledge production and the financial resource allocation through the prisms of innovation and financial intermediation. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a double-methodological framework. The first consists of bibliometric methods using 1,070 publications from Scopus, analyzing co-offering key words, research trends and institutional productivity relating blue economy and finance. The second phase includes a data mining pipeline using linked data methodologies on the EU-funded blue economy projects from the CORDIS database using SPARQL. Stages include preprocessing, clustering, funding analysis and visual exploration of thematic and temporal trends. Findings The results show a strong alignment in the evolution between academic research and public funding priorities. Both analyses revealed an acceleration from 2013 – years on blue economy research, focusing on the topics of sustainable development, marine governance and technological innovation. Some strategic domains in EU projects, e.g. marine shipping, water cleaning and blue biotechnology, demonstrate a similar focus. At the same time, the thematic analyses revealed the imbalances of too strong and too weak thematic clusters, including re-search areas in marine tourism and coastal ecosystems. Research limitations/implications The bibliometric dataset focuses on the Scopus-indexed English publications, leaving out the potentiality of regional or policy-oriented papers. The funding analysis is exclusive for the EU projects, with a potential extension on a global scale. Potential work could include impact evaluations. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first that systematically applies bibliometric and funding-mapping da-ta mining to explore the Blue Economy research-policy nexus. This paper combines scientific publication trends with EU project funding data to analyze the degree of match between research activity and financial support in relation to blue economy. The results are actionable for the policymakers, financing agencies and researchers willing to align financial instruments with sustainability-driven innovation in marine systems.