Bekos, Michael A.Niedermann, BenjaminNöllenburg, MartinLaramee, Robert S. and Oeltze, Steffen and Sedlmair, Michael2019-06-022019-06-0220191467-8659https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.13729https://diglib.eg.org:443/handle/10.1111/cgf13729External labeling is frequently used for annotating features in graphical displays and visualizations, such as technical illustrations, anatomical drawings, or maps, with textual information. Such a labeling connects features within an illustration by thin leader lines with their labels, which are placed in the empty space surrounding the image. Over the last twenty years, a large body of literature in diverse areas of computer science has been published that investigates many different aspects, models, and algorithms for automatically placing external labels for a given set of features. This state-of-the-art report introduces a first unified taxonomy for categorizing the different results in the literature and then presents a comprehensive survey of the state of the art, a sketch of the most relevant algorithmic techniques for external labeling algorithms, as well as a list of open research challenges in this multidisciplinary research field.Humancentered computingVisualization techniquesInformation visualizationTheory of computationComputational geometry10.1111/cgf.13729833-860