Evolving Thematic Map Design in Academic Cartography: A Thirty-Year Study Based on Multilingual Journals

TL;DR

This longitudinal study analyzes the evolution of academic thematic map design over 30 years, revealing trends toward increased complexity and institutional convergence across Chinese and English scholarly publications.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of thematic map design evolution in academic cartography over three decades using multilingual datasets.

Findings

Chinese and English maps share similar structural conventions.

Both groups show increased element richness and hue diversity over time.

Layout structures have remained relatively stable during the study period.

Abstract

Thematic maps play a central role in academic communication, yet their large-scale design evolution has rarely been examined empirically. This study presents a longitudinal and multilingual analysis of thematic map design practices in academic cartography from 1990 to 2020. We compile a corpus of 45,732 research articles from sixteen authoritative Chinese- and English-language journals and extract 23,928 maps using computer vision and large-model-based document parsing to build a structured dataset. Map design characteristics are quantified across three dimensions: map elements, color design, and layout structure. Results show that Chinese- and Englishlanguage academic maps share highly similar structural conventions, typically employing restrained color palettes with neutral dominant hues, low saturation, high brightness, and limited hue diversity, as well as centered layouts with high main-map occupation ratios. Differences exist in that English-language maps show slightly greater hue richness and compactness, whereas Chinese-language maps historically rely more on neutral hues and integrated layouts. Temporal analysis reveals parallel evolutionary trends in both groups, including increasing element richness, legend usage, and hue diversity, alongside stable layout structures. Overall, the findings suggest that academic map design evolution is characterized more by institutional convergence than cultural divergence.