Where Is Southeast Asian Climate Research Produced? A Bibliometric Analysis of Climate Science Literature

Abstract Authorship in research manuscripts offers a useful lens to examine demographic participation in academic publishing, a process central to the production and dissemination of science. Climate research is particularly important for the 11 countries that comprise Southeast Asia (SEA), where environmental and socioeconomic conditions elevate vulnerability to climate change. In some cases, these factors can limit scientific capacity, highlighting the need for equitable international collaborations. This study quantifies author affiliations, publisher locations, funding acknowledgments, and citations in SEA physical climate science literature using metadata from 729 publications between 2014 and 2023. Collectively as a region, SEA‐affiliated authors comprise 30.8% of all author country‐affiliation counts, with 53.6% of manuscripts including at least one SEA‐affiliated author. However, this authorship distribution is uneven among SEA nations, varying from zero for Timor‐Leste to 7% affiliated with Vietnam. Additionally, country‐level metrics show that the top three countries in authorship (USA, China, and Japan) comprise 37.5% of all authors. These same countries were mentioned 312 times in funding statements, compared to 251 for SEA‐based institutions. Moreover, 90.3% of the articles are published in journals based in the USA and Europe. Manuscripts exclusively authored by non‐SEA researchers on average received more citations than those with at least one SEA author. Together, these results reveal how local and external influences shape SEA climate science, demonstrating how perceptions of representation vary depending on how groups are aggregated. Quantifying these patterns can serve as basis for identifying challenges and opportunities for local participation in SEA climate science research.