Evaluating Criminology and Criminal Justice.

• Author: Ferrall, Bard R.
• Position: Review

ELLEN G. COHN, DAVID P. FARRINGTON & RICHARD A. WRIGHT, EVALUATING CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1008) 147 pp.

Called "the most comprehensive literature review of citation analysis in general and the most thorough examination and exploration of research on this topic in criminology and criminal justice" in a foreword by Marvin Wolfgang, this study demonstrates the specific techniques of citation analysis, and aims to show that notwithstanding various shortcomings of the methods, citation analysis is a valuable tool for assessing the influence of scholars, journals, and university departments. The procedures demonstrated in this book include an examination of the nine leading journals over the period 1986 through 1995 to determine the subject matters covered, most cited authors, and the changes occurring over the time period. Citations in twenty leading journals are then analyzed for the single year 1990. The methods are then extended backward to 1945 to determine the most cited authors since then. The authors find that a comparison of the four data sets reveal more change than continuity as to who is most cited at any given time, but that the most influential scholars seem to combine qualities of intellectual stamina, breadth of study, and professional excellence. The problem of ranking journals by importance is considered; to the two current methods, "reputational" and citation (counting the times a journal is cited), the authors add a third, the "luminaries" method. The authors acknowledge the problems with this method, which identifies the journals in which the most cited authors publish their articles, but suggest that improvements in citation analysis may make the "luminaries" method an increasingly valid way of ranking the journals...