---
title: "SDG 14 Life below water: research papers"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 14 (Life below water) was addressed by 516 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (284), AI (115) and operations research (41). It is #17 of the 17 goals by papers from 2023 to 2025 (163)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/14-life-below-water
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/14-life-below-water.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 14 (Life below water) was addressed by 516 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (284), AI (115) and operations research (41). (as of 2026-10-31)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-10-31T17:45:59+09:00
window: 2026-10-02 to 2026-10-31
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# SDG 14: Life below water

Papers in the tracked journals on UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life below water. OpenAlex assigns a paper to each UN Sustainable Development Goal that its classifier scores above 0.4 from the paper's text; a paper can belong to several goals or to none.

All 17 goals: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/sdgs.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 14 (Life below water) was addressed by 516 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (284), AI (115) and operations research (41).
- It is #17 of the 17 goals by papers from 2023 to 2025 (163).
- 62 of them were published in 2025, against 40 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Ocean University of China (15), China Agricultural University (10) and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (10).
- The journals publishing most of them were Ecological Economics (43), Expert Systems with Applications (43) and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (6).
- The most-cited of them is “Underwater image enhancement: a comprehensive review, recent trends, challenges and applications” (Artificial Intelligence Review, 2021), with 312 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 29 | 32 | 24 | 47 | 20 | 41 | 19 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 18 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 9 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 3 | 9 | 11 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 40 | 47 | 39 | 56 | 44 | 65 | 45 | 56 | 62 | 62 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Ecological Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ecological-economics.md) | 43 |
| 2 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 43 |
| 3 | [Journal of Environmental Economics and Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-environmental-economics-and-management.md) | 6 |
| 4 | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 6 |
| 5 | [Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-outdoor-recreation-and-tourism.md) | 6 |
| 6 | [Pattern Recognition](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/pattern-recognition.md) | 5 |
| 7 | [Neural Computing and Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/neural-computing-and-applications.md) | 5 |
| 8 | [Land Use Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/land-use-policy.md) | 4 |
| 9 | [Resources Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/resources-policy.md) | 4 |
| 10 | [World Development](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/world-development.md) | 4 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Ocean University of China | 15 |
| 2 | China Agricultural University | 10 |
| 3 | Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs | 10 |
| 4 | [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique.md) | 6 |
| 5 | Dalian Maritime University | 6 |
| 6 | University of Tasmania | 6 |
| 7 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 5 |
| 8 | University of Florida | 5 |
| 9 | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas | 4 |
| 10 | NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service | 4 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 80 |
| 2 | United States | 30 |
| 3 | Australia | 18 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 17 |
| 5 | Norway | 13 |
| 6 | Spain | 12 |
| 7 | Italy | 12 |
| 8 | France | 10 |
| 9 | Canada | 9 |
| 10 | Hong Kong | 8 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | sustainable fisheries | 12 |
| 2 | fisheries management | 11 |
| 3 | aquaculture | 10 |
| 4 | convolutional neural networks | 8 |
| 5 | marine protected areas | 8 |
| 6 | attention mechanism | 7 |
| 7 | blue economy | 7 |
| 8 | fish taxonomy | 6 |
| 9 | deep-sea mining | 5 |
| 10 | fish counting | 5 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 312 | 4.8 | [Underwater image enhancement: a comprehensive review, recent trends, challenges and applications](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-021-10025-z) | [Artificial Intelligence Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/artificial-intelligence-review.md) | 2021-06-01 | Smitha Raveendran, Mukesh D. Patil, Gajanan K. Birajdar |
| 2 | 203 | 3.0 | [Temperate fish detection and classification: a deep learning based approach](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-020-02154-9) | [Applied Intelligence](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/applied-intelligence.md) | 2021-03-22 | Kristian Muri Knausgård, Arne Wiklund, Tonje Knutsen Sørdalen et al. |
| 3 | 191 | 1.7 | [Red tide time series forecasting by combining ARIMA and deep belief network](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2017.03.027) | [Knowledge-Based Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/knowledge-based-systems.md) | 2017-04-05 | Mengjiao Qin, Zhihang Li, Zhenhong Du |
| 4 | 191 | 1.7 | [Sustainable Seafood From Aquaculture and Wild Fisheries: Insights From a Discrete Choice Experiment in Germany](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.06.005) | [Ecological Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ecological-economics.md) | 2017-08-04 | Julia Bronnmann, Frank Asche |
| 5 | 176 | 1.7 | [Globalization and commoditization: The transformation of the seafood market](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomm.2017.12.004) | [Journal of commodity markets](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-commodity-markets.md) | 2017-12-21 | James L. Anderson, Frank Asche, Taryn Garlock |
| 6 | 153 | 1.5 | [Viewpoint: Induced Innovation in Fisheries and Aquaculture](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2018.02.002) | [Food Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/food-policy.md) | 2018-02-22 | Frank Asche, Martin D. Smith |
| 7 | 152 | 2.0 | [Green technology adoption for fleet deployment in a shipping network](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trb.2020.06.004) | [Transportation Research Part B Methodological](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-b-methodological.md) | 2020-07-17 | Lu Zhen, Yiwei Wu, Shuaian Wang et al. |
| 8 | 131 | 1.3 | [Deep learning with multi-scale feature fusion in remote sensing for automatic oceanic eddy detection](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2018.09.006) | [Information Fusion](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-fusion.md) | 2018-09-13 | Yanling Du, Wei Song, Qile He et al. |
| 9 | 129 | 2.3 | [A Survey of Deep Learning Techniques for Underwater Image Classification](https://doi.org/10.1109/tnnls.2022.3143887) | [IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ieee-transactions-on-neural-networks-and-learning-systems.md) | 2022-02-01 | Sparsh Mittal, Srishti Srivastava, J. Phani Jayanth |
| 10 | 114 | 1.2 | [The impact of green practices in coastal tourism: An empirical investigation on an eco-labelled beach club](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2018.08.011) | [International Journal of Hospitality Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-hospitality-management.md) | 2018-08-22 | Roberto Merli, Michele Preziosi, Alessia Acampora et al. |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). SDG 14: Life below water. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/14-life-below-water

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-sdgs-14-life-below-water,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {SDG 14: Life below water},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/14-life-below-water}},
  urldate = {2026-10-31},
  note = {Journal 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/).