Most-Cited Scholars in Four International Journals

Abstract

This chapter focuses on our first stream of research, which examines a major criminology and criminal justice journal in the United States as well as one from each of the major English-speaking countries around the world (Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom). The four journals are the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, the British Journal of Criminology, the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and Criminology, which is the house journal of the American Society of Criminology. For each journal, we discuss the results we obtained, including presenting a list of the most-cited scholars in each journal in 2016–2020 (those ranked up to 50). The comparable rankings of these scholars in the six previous five-year time periods that we studied (from 1986–1990) are also included, so that citations are documented over a 35-year period. We then explain how we created a combined measure of influence based on all four journals that gives each journal equal weight, and we present a table of the 50 most-cited scholars on this combined measure. The most-cited works of the ten most-cited scholars are also identified. This chapter concludes with a discussion of continuity and changes in citations over time.