Bibliometric Insights into Child Abuse and the Law: Mapping the Thirty Years of Publications

Abstract

Child abuse is a global problem that affects children across all societal levels in any form of physical, emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, or exploitation that results in actual or potential harm to a child's health, survival, and development, This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of thirty years of scholarly work on child abuse and the law, a field that has expanded in response to increasing global concern over the legal, social and institutional dimensions of child protection. Despite the growth of research, systematic mapping of its intellectual structure remains limited, resulting in fragmented understanding of thematic development and research priorities. To address this gap, the study employed a structured methodology beginning with data collection through Scopus advanced searching, using a refined search strategy that yielded a final dataset of 555 peer reviewed publications. The dataset was subjected to statistical and temporal trend analysis using the Scopus Analyzer, followed by data cleaning and harmonisation using OpenRefine to ensure consistency in author names, keywords and institutional affiliations. Subsequently, VOSviewer was used to perform co-authorship, co-citation and keyword co-occurrence analyses, producing visual network maps that reveal dominant research clusters and patterns of scholarly collaboration. Numerical results show a significant expansion of publications from 1995 to 2025, with marked growth after 2010, driven by heightened international attention to children’s rights, evolving legislative frameworks and increased interdisciplinary engagement. The keyword co-occurrence network identified seven major thematic clusters, including child sexual abuse, policing and investigation, mental health impacts, mandatory reporting, digital harms and welfare policy, highlighting the multifaceted nature of legal discourse in child protection. Collaboration analysis demonstrated that the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada serve as central contributors to global research networks, while emerging participation from Asian and European countries indicates broadening scholarly engagement. Overall, the findings provide an integrated overview of research trajectories, illuminate conceptual linkages within the field and offer a foundational evidence base for advancing legal, policy and interdisciplinary scholarship on child abuse.