Advancing energy justice research: A comprehensive scientometric analysis of global trends and gaps

• Global push for clean energy intensifies, raising energy justice concerns. • Study employs bibliometrics to comprehensively assess 1497 documents (1983–2025). • Post-2015 sees a significant surge in energy justice research activity. • Evolving conceptual framework necessitates a nuanced understanding. • Research identifies factors, measurements, and impacts in energy justice discourse. Energy justice has emerged as a key area of study, focusing on addressing these inequities, particularly for marginalized and vulnerable communities. Despite the efforts of numerous scholars in this field, gaps persist in conceptual clarity, with energy justice often conflated with energy inequality. Aiming to enhance both theoretical understanding and practical applications of energy justice, this study employs bibliometrics and network analysis to examine 1497 documents sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases spanning 1983–2025, using the VOSviewer and Biblioshiny packages of R software. It comprehensively reviews the research landscape, covering key authors, institutions, influential articles, collaborations, emerging topics, and trends, while also synthesizing contested issues in the field, such as the evolving concept of “energy justice”, its influencing factors, and policy recommendations. This study advances energy justice research by systematically analyzing its core dimensions, identifying research gaps, and guiding future inquiry, thus lowering entry barriers and enhancing scholarly efficiency in the field.