Ranking the Openness of Criminology Units: An Attempt to Incentivize the Use of Librarians, Institutional Repositories, and Unit-Dedicated Collections to Increase Scholarly Impact and Justice

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862231172737
• Author: Scott Jacques
• Date: 01 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862231172737

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2023, Vol. 39(3) 371 –386

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862231172737

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Article

Ranking the Openness of

Criminology Units: An

Attempt to Incentivize

the Use of Librarians,

Institutional Repositories,

and Unit-Dedicated

Collections to Increase

Scholarly Impact and Justice

Scott Jacques1

Abstract

In this article, I describe and explain a way for criminologists—as individuals, as groups,

and, especially, as university units (e.g., colleges, departments, schools)—to increase

the quantity and quality of open criminology. They should ask university librarians to

make their outputs open access (OA) on their “unit repositories” (URs), which are unit-

dedicated “collections” on universities’ institutional repositories (IR). I try to advance this

practice by devising and employing a metric, the “URscore,” to document, analyze, and

rank criminology units’ contributions to open criminology, as prescribed. To illustrate

the metric’s use, I did a study of 45 PhD-granting criminology units in the United States.

I found almost all of them have access to an IR; less than two thirds have a UR; less than

one third have used it this decade; their URs have a total of 190 open outputs from the

2020s, with 78% emanating from the top three “most open” PhD-granting criminology

units in the United States: University of California, Irvine (with 72 open outputs), John Jay

College of Criminal Justice (with 47 such outputs), and University of Nebraska, Omaha

(with 30 such outputs). I end with a discussion of critical issues, instructions, and futures,

including what I learned from publishing this article’s preprint.

Keywords

open criminology, unit repository, URscore

1Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

Corresponding Author:

Scott Jacques, Criminal Justice & Criminology, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 3992, Atlanta, GA

30302, USA.

Email: me@scottjacques.us

1172737CCJXXX10.1177/10439862231172737Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeJacques

research-article2023

372 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 39(3)

Introduction to Open Criminology

The default in criminology is to be “closed.” Think of paywalled papers and books;

locked-up data and code; unshared teaching materials. Our scholarly communication

is muddled. The status quo made sense in 1950 because of technological limitations.

The computer and internet made information free like never before. Criminology is

changing from closed to open.

“Open criminology” refers to the reasons, processes, and results of making crimi-

nological outputs “open access” (OA): “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most

copyright and licensing restrictions” (Suber, n.d.). Examples of open outputs are

“gold” and “diamond” articles, chapters, and books; final reports on the websites of

centers and funders; preprints, postprints, reviews, datasets, and code libraries on

repositories; and open educational resources, from syllabi to lecture notes and ques-

tion banks.

Open outputs are a small subset of all criminology outputs. The vast majority of

them are inaccessible (Ashby, 2021). Closed outputs create a privileged class of peo-

ple who have access—through purchase (e.g., as with articles) or request (e.g., as often

happens with data, code, and teaching materials)—and use this to their advantage.

Criminology’s “one-percenters” don’t mean to harm others, but they unfairly benefit

from the status quo.

Closed science is antiutilitarian. Humanity and science are held back by closed

outputs, promoted by open ones. It is logical and karmic that open outputs are more

impactful, as measured by citation and altmetrics, because they constitute a more

inclusive and diverse science (Hitchcock, 2004); not only in stakeholder demograph-

ics, but also in the resultant opportunity to do and spread scholarship (e.g., adapt arti-

cles into open educational resources, try to replicate findings with open data and code).

The current dominance of closed criminology is not out of necessity. Criminologists

have everything they need to make their outputs open, right now, for free. There is a

literature on OA that shows why it is useful (impact, social justice) and how to par-

ticipate (e.g., deposit preprints, prepare data for public consumption) (see CrimRxiv,

n.d.-a, b).

Criminologists should not be considering whether to participate in OA. The ques-

tion is, How best to participate? As with reducing crime and improving criminal jus-

tice, there are different strategies for increasing the quantity and quality of open

criminology.

In this article, I outline what I believe to be the theoretically best way for criminolo-

gists to achieve this mission. In the next section, I describe my proposed strategy’s

basis: legal (copyright and licenses), administrative (librarianship), and organizational

(unit- and institutional repositories [IRs]). On that basis, I created a process for doing

open criminology that, in theory, has the highest utility of the options.

In the next section, I present information and ideas on why my proposed process is

“best”: with more utility—benefit relative to cost—than alternatives. Not perfect, but

better. Not necessarily best for any given individual, but best for the modal criminolo-

gist and, by extension, best for the population and its stakeholders.