ABSTRACT Sexual assault remains an alarmingly widespread societal problem. This bibliometric analysis aims to map the scientific production on sexual assault in the last decade. A total of 1828 research articles extracted from the Scopus database and published between 2012 and 2022 were investigated. The study presented a detailed overview of the research output of sexual assault, identified knowledge gaps, and recommended future directions. Visualizations and statistical analyses focused on publication volume and growth, authorship patterns, journal sources, institution productivity, country productivity, and citations, topical emphasis based on keywords, and highly cited articles. Key findings show sexual assault literature growing exponentially in recent years at an 18% annual rate, but with imbalances in author visibility and influence as well as geographical concentration of scholarship in Western institutions. Conceptual content centers on gendered experiences described at an individual level using precise assault terminology rather than abstract detectors of social forces enabling violence. Opportunities exist to consolidate knowledge and address disparities by facilitating collaboration across siloed authors not fully engaging peer work to date as well as diversifying institutional participation globally.
Saber Haimed (Tue,) studied this question.