---
title: "Public diplomacy research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "Historical profile (data snapshot 2026-11-04). From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “public diplomacy” appeared in 251 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in marketing (244), higher education and research (3) and AI (2)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/public-diplomacy
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/public-diplomacy.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Historical profile (data snapshot 2026-11-04). From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “public diplomacy” appeared in 251 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in marketing (244), higher education and research (3) and AI (2)."
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-04T18:03:26+09:00
window: 2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “public diplomacy”

[Browse research topics](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/directory/page/5.md)

Historical profile. Data snapshot: 2026-11-04. This profile is outside the current selection; the figures and research below are retained from that snapshot. Browse the directory for other profiles.

Research on “public diplomacy” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “public diplomacy” appeared in 251 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in marketing (244), higher education and research (3) and AI (2).
- 16 of them were published in 2025, against 17 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were University of Southern California (5), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (4) and The University of Sydney (4).
- The journals publishing most of them were Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (82), Public Relations Review (6) and Higher Education Policy (1).
- The most-cited of them is “Place Branding and Public Diplomacy” (Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 2019), with 173 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 17 | 23 | 29 | 16 | 46 | 25 | 15 | 37 | 16 | 20 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 17 | 27 | 30 | 17 | 46 | 25 | 16 | 37 | 16 | 20 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Place Branding and Public Diplomacy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/place-branding-and-public-diplomacy.md) | 82 |
| 2 | [Public Relations Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/public-relations-review.md) | 6 |
| 3 | [Higher Education Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/higher-education-policy.md) | 1 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [University of Southern California](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-southern-california.md) | 5 |
| 2 | [Ben-Gurion University of the Negev](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/ben-gurion-university-of-the-negev.md) | 4 |
| 3 | [The University of Sydney](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/the-university-of-sydney.md) | 4 |
| 4 | University of Łódź | 4 |
| 5 | [Lund University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/lund-university.md) | 3 |
| 6 | [University of Oxford](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-oxford.md) | 3 |
| 7 | Chulalongkorn University | 2 |
| 8 | Georgetown University | 2 |
| 9 | Halmstad University | 2 |
| 10 | Miami University | 2 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | United States | 23 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 11 |
| 3 | Australia | 9 |
| 4 | Israel | 7 |
| 5 | Spain | 6 |
| 6 | China | 4 |
| 7 | Poland | 4 |
| 8 | Sweden | 4 |
| 9 | Denmark | 3 |
| 10 | Germany | 2 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | place branding | 32 |
| 2 | nation branding | 22 |
| 3 | soft power | 15 |
| 4 | strategic narratives | 11 |
| 5 | national image | 9 |
| 6 | national identity | 8 |
| 7 | [tourism promotion](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/tourism-promotion.md) | 8 |
| 8 | [generative AI](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/generative-ai.md) | 6 |
| 9 | cultural diplomacy | 5 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 173 | 2.0 | [Place Branding and Public Diplomacy](https://doi.org/10.1057/41254.1751-8059) | [Place Branding and Public Diplomacy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/place-branding-and-public-diplomacy.md) | 2019-07-18 |  |
| 2 | 118 | 1.1 | [Three dimensions of China’s “outward-oriented” higher education internationalization](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0262-1) | [Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/higher-education.md) | 2018-03-27 | Hantian Wu |
| 3 | 93 | 1.0 | [From soft power to sports diplomacy: a theoretical and conceptual discussion](https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-019-00116-8) | [Place Branding and Public Diplomacy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/place-branding-and-public-diplomacy.md) | 2019-02-07 | Yoav Dubinsky |
| 4 | 81 | 0.8 | [Taming feminism? The place of gender equality in the ‘Progressive Sweden’ brand](https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-017-0091-5) | [Place Branding and Public Diplomacy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/place-branding-and-public-diplomacy.md) | 2018-01-17 | Katarzyna Jezierska, Ann E Towns |
| 5 | 80 | 0.7 | [Public relations message strategies and public diplomacy 2.0: An empirical analysis using Central-Eastern European and Western Embassy Twitter accounts](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.02.004) | [Public Relations Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/public-relations-review.md) | 2017-02-21 | Melissa D. Dodd, Steve J. Collins |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “public diplomacy”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/public-diplomacy

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-public-diplomacy,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “public diplomacy”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/public-diplomacy}},
  urldate = {2026-11-04},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).