Abstract: This study takes published papers and raw geological data collected from the same period of time as subject. It builds an exponential growth model with dividing two different growing stages for both literature and data from 1979 to 2013. More comparative analysis results show that the accumulation of raw geological data to be the main driving factor for growth of literature on marine geology. Increase of research staff and the national needs as well as investment are the internal and external factors respectively for the growth of literature.