The Darknet as an Object of Scientific Interest: A Review of Russian Publications (Based on the Russian Science Citation Index Database)

This article is devoted to analyzing the state of Russian scientific research on the darknet based on publications indexed in the RSCI database. The object of the research is the body of scholarly works on darknet topics; the subject is their quantitative dynamics, thematic structure, indexing level, and overall scientific visibility. Drawing on the elibrary.ru portal, the author analyzed 50 relevant publications whose titles contain the term “darknet” or “даркнет”; news items, abstracts, and conference materials were excluded from consideration. The paper presents summary tables reflecting the distribution of articles by year, main thematic areas, and indexing databases. The research methodology is based on general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction) as well as on specialized methods – content analysis and the narrative method. The scientific novelty of the work lies in obtaining the first systematic snapshot of the Russian darknet discourse, which made it possible to quantitatively assess its fragmentation, disciplinary imbalances, and extremely low international visibility. Based on the conducted research, it can be concluded that Russian darknet studies are in a rudimentary state: narrow legal and technical works predominate, there 
is an acute shortage of socio-humanitarian reflection, and the level of indexing in leading global databases remains minimal. We note separately that the results obtained confirm the hypothesis of the absence of a unified scientific field and point to the need to create specialized platforms for interdisciplinary darknet research.