Research performance and trends in child sexual abuse research: a Science Citation Index Expanded-based analysis

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a serious public health problem (Gilbert et al. in Lancet 373(9658):167-180, 2009a. 10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61707-9; Singh et al. in J Fam Med Prim Care 3(4):430-435, 2014. 10.4103/2249-4863.148139; Veenema et al. in Int J Nurs Stud 52(4):864-881, 2015. 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2014.10.017) and a risk factor for child development (Barth et al. in Int J Public Health 58(3):469-483, 2013. 10.1007/s00038-012-0426-1). The present bibliometric analysis evaluated research performance and trends of CSA research from 1991 to 2017. The analysis was based on data extracted from Science Citation Index Expanded. The results revealed a progressive increase in the volume of indexed articles that sharply grows between 2009 and 2017. The majority of the papers analyzed were in the area of psychiatry. In total, these articles were published mostly in English and in 777 journals, the largest volume of articles were in the field of pediatrics. The journal authors come from 105 countries, with the United States ranking on the top in all bibliometrics indicators assessed, including number of articles produced by institution. Three thousand seven hundred and fourteen articles (3714) articles on CSA were utilized to calculate the Y-index for authors. From the authors, J.D. Bremner and G. Hornor have the highest contributions with a Y-index of 24 (0.7854). Other findings indicated that the peak of citations per publication occured in the 5th year. The most frequently cited and most impactful article was from Felitti et al. (Am J Prev Med 14(4):245-258, 1998. 10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8). Six of the ten highly cited papers maintained their impact according to the 2017 citations. Data also revealed that research trends in the field of CSA can be clustered into 11 categories, with violence being the one that concentrates the greatest number of terms used in the papers. The three main hotspots are sexual abuse, maltreatment and sexual development. Lastly, this article discusses the type of research that contributes to the body of knowledge about CSA and the challenges this poses for the projection of future studies.