This study examined emerging and established topics in drone research, focusing on citation impact and knowledge flows across China, the United States, the EU, Ukraine, and Russia between 2020 and 2025 using OpenAlex bibliographic data. The findings revealed that drone-related science is characterised by growing geopolitical asymmetries in scientific production, citation concentration, and international knowledge exchange. In particular, China increasingly dominated scientific production, fractional authorship contribution, and domestic citation circulation. In contrast, the United States and EU countries maintained comparatively more internationally distributed citation structures. However, China-affiliated publications became increasingly integrated into global citation networks, particularly through growing citation exchange with the United States and European countries. Notably, the interpretation of authorship and citation patterns was complicated by the high proportion of publications with unidentified affiliations, which reached 50% in 2025 within weak-signal topics. These findings underscore the importance of developing comprehensive national Research Organisation Registries (RORs). Although China demonstrated a citation advantage, this was partly driven by high internal domestic citation concentration rather than exclusively by global integration. Moreover, China still imported proportionally more knowledge from the EU-14 and the United States than it exported, with this asymmetry increasing over time. EU-14 countries maintained the strongest citation impact in weak-signal topics, suggesting a more prominent role in shaping emerging research directions. At the same time, China-affiliated publications cited the United States more frequently than the EU-14 in both strong- and weak-signal topics, with this pattern being particularly pronounced in weak-signal areas.

翻译：本研究利用OpenAlex文献计量数据，考察了2020至2025年间无人机研究中的新兴与成熟主题，重点关注中国、美国、欧盟、乌克兰及俄罗斯之间的引文影响与知识流动。研究发现，无人机相关科学呈现出日益加剧的地缘政治不对称性，具体体现在科学产出、引文集中度及国际知识交流方面。特别是，中国在科学产出、作者贡献份额及国内引文流通方面的主导地位不断增强。相比之下，美国和欧盟国家保持了相对更为国际化的引文分布结构。然而，中国所属出版物的全球引文网络融入度日益提高，尤其体现在与美国和欧洲国家引文交流的增长上。值得注意的是，作者归属与引文模式的解读因未识别机构隶属关系的出版物比例较高而复杂化，在弱信号主题中，该比例于2025年达到50%。这些发现凸显了建立全面的国家研究机构注册库（RORs）的重要性。尽管中国展现出引文优势，但这在一定程度上源于高度集中的国内引文，而非完全得益于全球融合。此外，中国从欧盟14国及美国输入的知识比例仍高于其输出，且这种不对称性随时间推移加剧。在弱信号主题中，欧盟14国保持了最强的引文影响力，表明其在塑造新兴研究方向方面作用更为突出。与此同时，在强信号和弱信号主题中，中国所属出版物引用了更多来自美国而非欧盟14国的文献，这一模式在弱信号领域尤为显著。