1. Impact trajectories on the basis of knowledge valorisation monitored by VLIZ
For 2025, VLIZ selected five impact trajects that will be documented separately, i.e. VLIZ climate research, the importance of the USV Gobelijn, two decades of ScheldeMonitor, VLIZ’s impact on the Blue Economy, and its European project funding efforts. See the section 'Impact trajectories' of this annual report.
2. Annual update of the inventory of the marine research landscape in Flanders (Compendium for Coast and Sea).
Each year, VLIZ maps the marine research landscape in Flanders and Belgium in an objective and systematic way. The most recent inventory was published in December 2025 in the policy briefing note “Marine Research in Flanders and Belgium: An Inventory of the Research Landscape”, prepared as part of the Compendium for Coast and Sea.
The 2025 inventory shows that, between 2008 and 2024, Belgian universities and research institutions produced between 447 and 974 peer-reviewed marine publications each year (an average of 685), across more than 2,006 scientific journals worldwide. This output is comparable to that of larger marine institutes in neighbouring countries.
A large majority of these publications (71%) appear in open access journals, compared with just 34% in 2008 (peaking at 79% in 2023)1. Belgian marine research is also strongly international. Since 2017, over 80% of publications each year have involved international collaboration (so-called international co-publications). Key partner countries include neighbouring nations (France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) as well as the United States.
The most common research fields are Marine & Freshwater Biology (2,022 publications), Environmental Sciences (1,976), Geosciences, Multidisciplinary (1,638), Oceanography (1,289) and Ecology (985). The fastest-growing areas are in engineering, as well as green and sustainable energy and technology. Over the study period, the number of publications in these fields increased tenfold.
In total, marine publications with at least one Belgian (co-)author published between 2008 and 2024 were cited 463,278 times according to Web of Science. This corresponds to an average of 39.3 citations per publication and an h-index of 235.
Would you like to explore the marine research landscape in more detail? You can consult the full report here.
1This figure is updated annually as more and more scientific journals retrospectively make their publications available online.