Scientific analysis of publications on the topic of school shooting in Russian‐language scientific periodicals

Relevance. The article presents the results of a scientometric analysis of the current state of school shooting research within the Russian scholarly field. The choice of the time period (2014–2024) is explained by the growth in the number of scholarly works on this topic in Russia. Based on the results of quantitative and qualitative analysis of Russian publications, the article outlines current indicators of the state of research in the field of school shooting studies, as well as the main gaps in scholarly knowledge on the topic of school shootings. Aim. To conduct a scientometric analysis of publications by Russian researchers on the topic of school shooting ("skulshuting") on the scientific electronic library website eLIBRARY.RU. Methods. Scientometric analysis was applied to investigate 185 scholarly works selected by title, keywords, and abstract containing the term "school shooting" ("skulshuting"), indexed on the eLIBRARY.RU website. Only articles with full text available on eLIBRARY.RU and published in journals between 2014 and 2024 (inclusive) were considered. Conference materials, dissertations, reports, patents, books, and grants were excluded from the analysis sample. Results. The phenomenon of school shootings is insufficiently researched within the Russian scholarly field. Most publications lack empirical data and analytical insights. There is no universally accepted definition of the term "school shooting" ("skulshuting"). Thematically, the phenomenon of school shootings is primarily examined within a legal context: focusing on issues of criminalizing school shootings, questions of criminal liability, criminological characteristics of the school shooter's personality, and the prevention of school shootings. Sociological, psychological, and pedagogical aspects of school shootings are addressed much less frequently.