Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP)
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Night-time lights, land cover, satellite imagery and maps.
Key findings#
- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 231 archived papers mentioned Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP) in their title, abstract or keywords (the search of earlier months' full texts is still under way), most of them in Nov 2023 (11).
- Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP) was mentioned in 6 papers in the last 30 days (2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04), ranking #56 of the 255 datasets mentioned.
- By journal category: Economics (5) and Finance (1).
- Most of them appeared in Small Business Economics (1), Research in Transportation Economics (1) and World Development (1).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP) was mentioned in 339 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (257), finance (23) and operations research (19).
- 79 of them were published in 2025, against 8 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Monash University (9), Peking University (8) and World Bank (7).
- The journals publishing most of them were World Development (21), Journal of Development Economics (16) and International Review of Economics & Finance (12).
- The most-cited of them is “Which night lights data should we use in economics, and where?” (Journal of Development Economics, 2020), with 403 citations.
- Papers use Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP) most often with NOAA (27), Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) (18) and MODIS (17); it has 44 partners in the code and data network, in the group around World Development…, Eurostat, International Energy….
Mentions over 36 months#
| Trend | Nov 23–Oct 24 | Nov 24–Oct 25 | Nov 25–Oct 26 | 36 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 72 | 75 | 84 | 231 |
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economics | 7 | 8 | 7 | 14 | 18 | 17 | 32 | 52 | 59 | 43 |
| Finance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 12 |
| Operations Research | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Management | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| AI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 2 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Statistics | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Marketing | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Information Systems | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Higher Education and Research | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| All categories | 8 | 9 | 7 | 18 | 21 | 18 | 41 | 70 | 79 | 68 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | World Development | 21 |
| 2 | Journal of Development Economics | 16 |
| 3 | International Review of Economics & Finance | 12 |
| 4 | Land Use Policy | 11 |
| 5 | Empirical Economics | 8 |
| 6 | Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice | 7 |
| 7 | Energy Economics | 6 |
| 8 | Journal of Comparative Economics | 6 |
| 9 | China Economic Review | 6 |
| 10 | Journal of Urban Economics | 5 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monash University | 9 |
| 2 | Peking University | 8 |
| 3 | World Bank | 7 |
| 4 | Xiamen University | 7 |
| 5 | London School of Economics and Political Science | 6 |
| 6 | Asian Development Bank | 5 |
| 7 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique | 5 |
| 8 | Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad | 5 |
| 9 | Southeast University | 5 |
| 10 | Centre for Economic Policy Research | 4 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 91 |
| 2 | United States | 48 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 42 |
| 4 | Australia | 22 |
| 5 | Germany | 22 |
| 6 | India | 15 |
| 7 | Italy | 14 |
| 8 | Netherlands | 12 |
| 9 | France | 11 |
| 10 | Hong Kong | 9 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | nighttime lights | 119 |
| 2 | China | 41 |
| 3 | India | 15 |
| 4 | economic growth | 14 |
| 5 | spatial spillover effects | 12 |
| 6 | economic development | 11 |
| 7 | urbanization | 11 |
| 8 | COVID-19 pandemic | 10 |
| 9 | economic activity | 10 |
| 10 | prefecture-level cities | 10 |
Most-cited papers#
| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 403 | 5.7 | Which night lights data should we use in economics, and where? | Journal of Development Economics | 2020-12-31 | John K. Gibson, Susan Olivia, Geua Boe‐Gibson et al. |
| 2 | 217 | 2.2 | Subways and urban growth: Evidence from earth | Journal of Urban Economics | 2018-09-25 | Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, Matthew A. Turner |
| 3 | 216 | 2.0 | Do refugee camps help or hurt hosts? The case of Kakuma, Kenya | Journal of Development Economics | 2017-09-28 | Jennifer Alix‐Garcia, Sarah Walker, Anne L. Bartlett et al. |
| 4 | 210 | 2.0 | Do the rich have stronger willingness to pay for environmental protection? New evidence from a survey in China | World Development | 2018-02-03 | Shuai Shao, Zhihua Tian, Meiting Fan |
| 5 | 170 | 3.5 | Digital finance and household carbon emissions in China | China Economic Review | 2022-10-07 | Xiaodi Qin, Haitao Wu, Rongrong Li |
Used together with#
| Used with | Type | Papers using both | Lift |
|---|---|---|---|
| NOAA | Dataset | 27 | 16.4 |
| Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) | Dataset | 18 | 6.4 |
| MODIS | Dataset | 17 | 5.8 |
| Sentinel / Copernicus | Dataset | 16 | 8.1 |
| Landsat | Dataset | 11 | 8.2 |
| World Development Indicators (World Bank) | Dataset | 11 | 1.6 |
| Afrobarometer / Latinobarometro | Dataset | 10 | 16.6 |
| Twitter / X | Dataset | 10 | 0.3 |
| Dataset | 9 | 0.4 | |
| National Bureau of Statistics of China | Dataset | 9 | 7.7 |
| OpenStreetMap | Dataset | 8 | 4.0 |
| V-Dem | Dataset | 8 | 6.0 |
| Date | Title | Journal | Authors | Affiliations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | Business networks and the persistence of entrepreneurship: evidence from China | Small Business Economics | Han Wang, Neil Lee | University of Southampton; London School of Economics and Political Science |
| 2026-10-21 | Localized economic spillovers of national logistics hubs: Micro-spatial causal evidence from China | Research in Transportation Economics | Hua Yao, Masoud Kahalimoghadam, Dongfang Wang et al. | The University of Melbourne; Southeast University; Wuyi University; … |
| 2026-10-21 | The impact of regional growth on internal migration: a district-level analysis for Malawi | World Development | Mauro Lanati, Rainer Thiele | University of Florence; Kiel Institute for the World Economy; Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel |
| 2026-10-09 | The impact of regional economic growth pressure on CSR disclosure: Evidence from China | International Review of Economics & Finance | Huahong Yan, Mingxuan Zhu, Jing Liu et al. | Capital University of Economics and Business; Shanxi University of Finance and Economics |
| 2026-10-07 | Next job: Matera. How tourism and spotlight shape the local labour market | Regional Science and Urban Economics | Luca Favero, Ilaria Malisan | Collegio Carlo Alberto; University of St Andrews; Bocconi University |
| 2026-10-06 | Regional heterogeneity in the relationship between temperature and household electricity consumption across rural South Africa | Utilities Policy | Yuxiang Ye, Saien Moodley, Steven F. Koch | University of the Witwatersrand; University of Pretoria |
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP). Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/night-time-lights-viirs-dmsp
@misc{scholar4ai-datasets-night-time-lights-viirs-dmsp,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Night-time lights (VIIRS, DMSP)},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/datasets/night-time-lights-viirs-dmsp}},
urldate = {2026-11-04},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}