Abstract The centenary of ICES Journal of Marine Science offers a unique opportunity to examine 100 years of continuous publication in marine science. Scientometric and bibliometric methods were used to quantify changes in research topics and citations in articles published in the Journal (1926–2025), and to identify patterns in topic evolution and drivers of the changes observed. The contribution, relative importance, and diversity of topics in the Journal have changed over time, reflecting shifts in topics (and the manner in which they are formulated and framed), technological advancements, funding mechanisms, and research priorities. The overall trend is away from purely descriptive marine biology and fish/fisheries-centric topics towards more applied, process-oriented, and ecosystem-based studies. The diversity of topics has also increased over time, consistent with trends in science broadly towards more interdisciplinary work. Funding and policy developments have surely played a key role. While citation patterns were strongly driven by publication year, article type (i.e. research, review, or conference article) and author number, there were measurable effects of topic and topic diversity. More diverse and novel articles (relative to the Journal average) tended to receive higher citations. High variability among these articles suggests that some works are initially less influential or require additional time to gain recognition. During the last 15–20 years the Journal has more actively shaped its content through editorial policies and criteria, initiatives, and a stringent and more selective peer-review process. The Journal has also become a home for a wide range of perspective articles. We hope that this has served to solidify the Journal’s position as a bastion of the core principles of scientific publication and positioned it as a compass for the future of marine research, a role we trust will continue long into the future.
Smoliński et al. (Thu,) studied this question.