Ship exhaust emissions have become an increasingly prominent global atmospheric environmental issue, triggering a series of ecological disturbances and adverse public health consequences. However, comprehensive analyses of the research progress and evolution trends in this field remain scarce. This study systematically retrieved 1346 scholarly publications in the ship exhaust emissions field for the period 2011–2025 from the Web of Science Core Collection and carried out a bibliometric analysis encompassing publication outputs, contributing countries/regions, and keyword characteristics. The findings reveal a sustained and robust growth trajectory in global research output, with annual publications increasing nearly fivefold over the 15-year study period. Notably, academic interest in this field has increased significantly since 2020 due to the implementation of the global sulfur cap regulation. Core thematic clusters (mean silhouette S = 0.7205) in this field include source apportionment, numerical modeling analysis, atmospheric criteria pollutants, and technological emission reduction strategies. The geographical distribution of research output shows a significant positive correlation with the importance of regional maritime economies. China, the United States, and Germany are the leading contributors in terms of publication outputs, while frequent research collaborations have been observed among European countries. Since 2021, the emergence of Automatic Identification System data as a keyword with high burst strength (intensity = 3.60) marks a paradigm shift toward a “big data-enabled refined management” framework. Concurrently, the sustained burst activity of keywords including nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and traffic-related emissions from 2023 to 2025 indicates rapidly growing scholarly attention to secondary aerosol precursors from shipping, and the critical need for coordinated multi-pollutant control strategies. Future research directions for ship exhaust emissions are expected to transition from fundamental characterization research to big data-driven monitoring and estimation methods, as well as advanced emission reduction technologies. The bibliometric insights derived from this study provide a valuable reference framework for subsequent in-depth studies on ship exhaust emissions.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.