Introduction

As a result of international and comparative criminology attracting growing attention this century, emphasis on studying China has been increasingly recognized (Liu et al. 2001a, b; Liu and Messner 2001; Bennett 2004; Broadhurst and Liu 2004; Liu 2007, 2008; Zhang et al. 2008: Messner 2015). Chinese criminology is growing in stature, maturity, and utility (Mei and Wang 2007). Under these circumstances, numerous peer-reviewed criminological articles researching crime and punishment in China have been published, and special issues on this topic have been developed in some leading scientific journals in the last decade. Behind the flourishing pages of Chinese criminology, we can wonder who wields influence in the criminological academy of China. In fact, scholarly influence studies in criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) have been under discussion over many years. Productivity and citation analysis are two common measurements to assess scholarly influence in CCJ (Cohn and Farrington 2011). By well-established methodology in western scholarship, the current study is the first one to measure the scholar influence in CCJ domain in China.

Literature Review

Scholarly Influence in Criminology and Criminal Justice

There is a fascination in modern societies that almost everything, varying from products, organizations, to academia, tends to be evaluated and ranked (Shichor 2009). A top 10 “something” exists in every aspect of our daily life. This is often connected to the commodification of domains that were previously less commodified. Academia is not an exception. Rankings of universities or programs, such as The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, have been applied to interpret educational and academic quality and influence. Following this orientation, abundant studies have measured scholarly influence in CCJ (Copes et al. 2012; Cohn and Farrington 1994, 1998, 1999, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012a, b; González-Alcaide et al. 2013). Individuals, doctoral programs, and university departments are the primary dimensions assessed (Cohn and Farrington 2007). Citation analysis and publication productivity are the most commonly used measures to determine scholarly influence and prestige (Cohn and Farrington 2011). In the following section, a brief review will be conducted on the exiting citation and productivity studies in the field of criminology.

Productivity

The assumption that scholars with more published works would enjoy more prestige and influence is one theoretical base of researches on publication productivity (Cohn and Farrington 2012a). In Cohn et al.’s (2000) research, 22 PhD graduates with the most peer-reviewed journal publications were identified. They were publication “stars” that accounted for 39% of all publications within selected journals. Some studies explored the relationship between scholar’s publication and other factors. For example, Frost et al. (2007) found that productivity of criminologists was prone to increase in the initial 5 years after PhD then to being relatively stable as their careers proceeded in the next 20 years. Gender also plays a role in productivity, as male criminologists are nearly twice as productive as their female counterparts on cumulative lifetime publication (Snell et al. 2009), but a greater integration into research networks of female scholars has resulted in a narrowing of this gender gap (Stack 2002).

Parker and Goldfeder (1979) conducted the first study on publication productivity in criminology. They calculated the numbers of publications of authors by institutional affiliation published in ten selected CCJ journals from 1927 to 1977, then a ranking of institutions based on total publications of all faculty in each respective institution. This procedure of counting individual publications first, then adding up the faculty’s works in the same department, is the basic rationale of productivity analysis at an institutional level. Among all the existing productivity studies, Kleck et al. (2007)’s and their follow-up (Kleck and Barnes 2011) merit detailed introduction because their methodological wisdom will be applied in the current study. In their study, Kleck et al. (2007) intended to evaluate 33 criminal justice doctoral programsFootnote 1 from the USA and Canada by counting the publications of their faculty from 2000 to 2005. In total, 541 faculty members were identified (adjunct faculty, instructors, lecturers, graduate assistants, emeritus faculty, and joint-appointment faculty with a major principle appointment in another institution were excluded) from all the targeted programs. Articles by the referred faculty published in 256 journals during 2000 and 2005 were searched within two electronic bibliographic databases: (1) ProQuest Criminal Justice Periodical Index (CJPI) and (2) Web of Science (WOS). When calculating publication counts of the faculty in every program, journal prestige that was assessed by Sorensen et al. (2006) and authorship shares were also considered; then, all the programs were ranked according to the total weighted credits. In the follow-up study, Kleck and Barnes (2011) used the same method to explore ranking changes in 2005–2009 from the previous 5 years. By comparing the 2009 Top Criminology Schools & Programs in the United States created by the US News & World Report (2009), we can find that 8 of the top 10 universities in Kleck and Barnes’ study (2011) also ranked in the top 10 of the US News & World Report list. This, to some extent, demonstrates the validity of productivity analysis for scholarly influence studies.

Citation

The basic rationale behind citation assessment of scholarly influence is that “good work is the work that others find useful and consequently cite in their own work” (Chirstenson and Sigelman 1985). It can be more specifically interpreted in the two major assumptions of Meadows (1974): (a) citation indicates influence and (b) most-cited works are the ones that were important in the area. Surprisingly and pitifully, in a citation study, Meho (2007) found that around 90% of peer-reviewed papers in academic journals had never been cited, and it was likely that most works enjoyed readers no more than their own authors, reviewers, and editors. There are several factors determining the frequency of citation for an article: most importantly, the “journal factor” (Callaham et al. 2002), methodological quality of the article (Lee et al. 2002), and the extent to which the article can be reached by readers (Stryker 2002). Methodologically, two sources are commonly used for citation analysis (Cohn and Farrington 2012a): one is electronic databases such as Journal Citation Reports, Google Scholar, or Scopus of Elsevier; the other is a direct examination of reference list of academic works then counting the cumulative amounts of citations of a named scholar or institution.

In terms of citation analysis, Wolfgang et al. (1978) are the criminological pioneers. Based on 3134 peer-reviewed articles and 556 books in criminology published from 1945 to 1972, they (1978) found that 2.2% of these works occupied half the citations identified from all the articles and books. By counting citations on references of articles published in six prestigious CCJ journals from 1991 to 1995, Cohn and Farrington (1998) ranked the quality of 20 CCJ doctoral programs registered in the American Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminal Justice and Criminology (AADPCJC), while more attention was drawn to analyze individual scholarly influence from the perspective of citation. In their researches, Cohn and Farrington (1994, 1998, 2007, 2008, 2012a, b) directly examined the reference list of academic works in CCJ journals within certain years and then counted the citations of all cited authors. The finalized influence ranking was based on the total citations of authors.

The Prestige of Major Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals

The quality of journals in which scholars publish their works is a common indication of how much he or she contributes to a particular field (Glenn and Villemez 1970; Cohn and Farrington 1998) and is a significant impact on faculty employment, merit, and promotion (Judge et al. 2004; MacKenzie and Piquero 2001). Therefore, systematically assessed prestige of journals could be a useful guide for authors to decide where to submit their works and an indicator of their academic influence (Regoli et al. 1982). There are two commonly used methods of evaluating the quality and prestige of journals. The first is an objective approach based on citation indexes of articles from a “targeted” journal. Databases Journal Citation Reports (JCR) created by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)Footnote 2 and SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) by Scopus are two frequently used databases to assess the impact of journals (Leydesdorff et al. 2010; Jacso 2010). With JCR, indicators such as the total numbers of citations, 5-year impact factor, numbers of source items, impact factor, immediacy index, and cited half-life are applied to quantify journal quality (Magri and Solari 1996). Hitherto, there are 52 journals in total that are under the subject category as Criminology & Penology in JCR (Web of Science 2014).

The second approach is considered more subjective, which has been applied in various CCJ journal prestige studies (Parker and Goldfeder 1979; Greene et al. 1985; Williams et al. 1995; Sorensen et al. 2006; Brown and Daly 2008; Gabbidon et al. 2010). Simply speaking, it is a peer-review approach where knowledgeable persons in the field are invited to rank journals under some predetermined scales. The “persons” include chairs or leaders of departments offering criminal justice graduate programs (Brown and Daly 2008), faculty members in CCJ departments (Parker and Goldfeder 1979; Greene et al. 1985), or members of criminological associations such as American Society of Criminology (ASC) and Academy of Criminal Justice Science (ACJS) (Williams et al. 1995; Sorensen et al. 2006; Gabbidon et al. 2010). The current study will use ratings of CCJ journals assessed by Sorensen et al. (2006)Footnote 3 as an important indicator of authors’ scholarly influence.

On the Chinese landscape, Yu (2012) listed nine major Chinese CCJ journals: Crime Study, Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, Juvenile Delinquency, Journal of Chinese People’s Public Security University (Social Science), Journal of Chinese Prison, Crime and Rehabilitation, Criminal Justice Science, Criminal Law Review (《刑法学评论》), and Criminal Law Review (《刑法学论丛》).Footnote 4 In terms of journal prestige, the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) was mentioned, but only Crime Study was a member of it. Therefore, it is quite difficult to compare the prestige of these Chinese journals and less possible to include them for analysis in the current study.

The Current Study

When the terms “scholarly influence” and “criminology/criminal justice” combined with “Chinese/China/People’s Republic of China”Footnote 5 are typed into Google and Google Scholar, pitifully but not surprisingly, there is no relevant information available. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for the current study. The precondition is how to operationalize the concept “scholarly influence in CCJ of China.” Farrington et al. aimed at the scholarly influence of the whole CCJ enterprise, and they studied those who published CCJ-focused work in selected journals by productivity and citation analysis. Deductively, if authors who have published articles of CCJ on the topic of China are located, then analysis on these people will be a measure of scholarly influence in CCJ of China. Specifically, a systematic search of articles that focus on China in confined CCJ journals would locate those who have done work on Chinese criminology; then, productivity and citation evaluations on these scholars and their institutions can provide an idea of “scholarly influence in CCJ of China.” This is the rationale of the current study.

Journals Included

Considering the general selection criterions defined by Cohn and Farrington in their studies (2008, 2012a), along with the purpose of special focus on Chinese criminology, selection criteria are the following:

  1. 1.

    Only journals that have been quantitatively assessed by Sorensen et al. (2006) should be included. This is because journal prestige will also be a measurement comparing scholarly influence in this study.

  2. 2.

    The establishment year of the journal should be prior to 2000, because every included journal should be available as an article searching source between 2000 and 2013. Therefore, journals in Sorensen et al’s list (2006) such as Criminology and Public Policy by Wiley that started in 2001 were excluded.

  3. 3.

    Journals must have published articles on CCJ of China within the given time window (2000–2013).

  4. 4.

    Journals that mainly cover disciplines such as abnormal behavior or legal psychology which overlap with CCJ are not considered. Otherwise, authors who specialize in psychology, medicine, or even hard science are likely to be found in large numbers, rather than criminological experts whom we are actually interested in. This would dramatically increase the workload in counting publications and citations but function only as statistical noise. Therefore, journals like Aggression and Violent Behavior have been filtered out.

  5. 5.

    Journals concerned with one specific aspect of CCJ are also problematic for the current study. If those journals are included, the number of articles concentrating on a certain topic will greatly increase, and then, productivity and citations of criminologists in this area will be elevated, which could possibly bias the final scholarly influence assessment (Cohn and Farrington 2012a). Thus, journals such as Police Quarterly and Journal of Drug Issues were not selected.

One flaw of Sorensen’s list is that it did not encompass the British Journal of Criminology (BJC), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (ANZJC), and International Journal of Law Crime and Justice (IJLCJ),Footnote 6 three well-known publications in the CCJ field which were included in other journal prestige (Brown and Daly 2008; Stack 1987) and scholarly influence studies (Cohn and Farrington 1999, 2008, 2012a; Kleck et al. 2007; Kleck and Barnes 2011). These two journals also satisfy the four selection criterions established earlier, except the first one. Therefore, they must not be missed for the current study. Kleck and Barnes (2011) have offered an alternative way to solve this problem. They found there were 19 journals shared by both Sorensen’s study (2006) and an earlier journal prestige study (Sorensen et al. 1992). So, Kleck and Barnes used the scores of the 19 journals in the previous study (1992) as independent variables and the newer ones as dependent variables to conduct an estimated bivariate regression. Finally, the equation “New = 3.78 + 0.308OLD” was generated. Again, BJC, ANZJC, and IJLCJ were rated in the old study with a weighting of 11.15, 7.17, and 8.79, respectively. Using this method, the following list of 20 CCJ journals was included in the current study (Table 1).

Table 1 Twenty selected CCJ journals for the current study
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Compared with the 20 CCJ journals (ten from the USA and ten from other countries) selected by Cohn and Farrington’s studies (2012a, b), we can find that 14 of those 20 journals overlap with the current study. Scores of the journals selected by this study range from 5.40 to 9.13, which are consistent with the distribution of that of the 69 journals in Sorensen et al. (2006) study. Therefore, we can conclude that the 20 journals for the current study are representative and valid for scholarly influence research.

Articles Included

Terms “China,” “Greater China,” “Chinese,” “Mainland China,” and “People’s Republic of China” were searched. We directly read every article which was listed to assess “relevance” after the first step of screening. Then, we selected articles that were published between 2000 and 2013. Meanwhile, we excluded articles that were solely concerned with Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macau or comparative researches between them. Articles that did a comprehensive comparison of numerous areas, among which China was occasionally discussed, were also not included.Footnote 7 This selection round involved very careful browsing on abstracts, sometimes even the methodology part, when the article titles did not reveal distinctive information. “Articles” included original research, research notes, special issues, etc., while book reviews, editorials, and obituaries were excluded (Cohn and Farrington 2012a). In total, there were 191 publications from the 20 named CCJ journals found. Then, information such as authors’ institutions, adopted research methods, and study topics was recorded.

There may be some criticisms on the selected articles because 191 seem to not be sufficient to tell the criminological story of China. However, Hebenton and Jou (2013) conducted a massive search for CCJ articles on People’s Republic of China (mainland only) published between 2000 and 2010.Footnote 8 This provided a sound coverage that could filter as many articles and journals as possible. Finally, 201 articles were obtained. In the current study, 140 articles were found within 2000 and 2010 by searching through just 20 journals. If regarding the 201 articles as the population, 140 as samples, to some extent, the 20 selected journals were representative and our searching strategy was efficient, especially given that journals and articles which were not suitable for the current study have been eliminated.

Productivity Analysis

Authorship status is regarded as a significant determination of candidate quality for job seeking and is increasingly important in tenure decisions (Seipel 2003); therefore, how to grant credits to authors of 191 articles, among which about 58% were multiple authored, cannot escape from consideration. The current study applied the following rating system for authorship credits established by Kleck et al. (2007, 2011):

  • Sole author = 1.00

  • First of two authors = 0.60 and second of two authors = 0.40

  • First of three authors = 0.40, second of three authors = 0.35, and third of three authors = 0.25

  • First of four or more authors = 0.40 and second or later of four or more authors = (0.60/(k − 1)), where k = total number of authors

Citation Counting

We approached alphabetical lists of all the references in each of the 191 articles and then counted the citations basically as Cohn and Farrington did in their studies (2008, 2012b). Authors in all cited works on the reference list, including research papers, books, unpublished materials, and conference reports (excluding book reviews), were counted. Institutional authors, such as the PRC Ministry of Public Security, to name one, were not recorded. There were also some Chinese news reports and online information cited, while even if the original documents were located, it was very hard to accurately distinguish the author’s identity because usually only the information of author’s full name was available. Therefore, news reports were not included. Multiple authors in the same publication would be equally treated regardless of author order. One important thing is that self-citations were excluded while the situation of coauthor was considered.Footnote 9 Titles of cited materials were also recorded.Footnote 10

Since only the family name with the initials of given and/or middle name was offered in many references, a laborious and time-consuming check against the original publications for authors’ full names was conducted. This efficiently minimized typos and confirmed the identity of cited authors. Sometimes, checking authors’ CV and personal website for publication experience was also necessary to match cited works with relevant authors. In addition, there were considerable Chinese resources being cited, which made this procedure for the current study more complicated than that of Cohn and Farrington’s research. First of all, name spelling in modern Chinese Pinyin and in the traditional one is quite different. For example, Chu, Tung Tsu, was cited by Wong (2000), while in Chen’s article (2002), it became Chu, Tongzu, which required a rigorous examination before confirmation. The other problem caused by cited documents in Chinese was that in some cases, the citing authors directly translated the title (including journal title) into English, instead of Pinyin or original English title (if available), and then referenced it. Because of different understandings, translation skills, and preference of the citing authors, occasionally, the same Chinese publication was cited in two articles in different names.Footnote 11 To find the original pieces of these cited works was a very difficult job, because direct searching by the translated title (or back translation) could hardly locate them precisely. To surmount this problem, a comprehensive fuzzy search was applied. For example, for the reference “Zhou et al. (2004) New Contemporary Positive Criminology—Study of Criminal Behavior. Beijing: People’s Court Press,” cited by Liu (2008), individual Chinese terms “当代(contemporary),” “实证(positive),” “犯罪学(criminology),” and “犯罪行为 (criminal behavior)” combined with the name of publisher and publishing year, along with author’s family name “周Zhou,” “刘Liu,” and “王Wang”Footnote 12 as the supplemented information, were typed into “Google” to search for the original article. This turned out to be an effective strategy to identify cited publications and authors. In total, we recorded 9515 citations by the 191 articles with an average of 49.8 per article. The self-citation rate was 6.19%.

The same authors and publications cited by the 191 articles were confirmed, and the frequencies of their citation were added up. Then, the most-cited scholars and publications were identified and ranked. As Cohn and Farrington defended (2008), in spite of careful checking, this method cannot guarantee exactly replicated results by other researchers because of different understandings of the article for selection, reference omission, difficulties in distinguishing authors, and clerical errors, but confidently, the major conclusions would be supported by future replicated studies, merely with marginal changes.

Findings

Scholarly Influence in Criminology and Criminal Justice of China

Productivity

Table 2 shows the top 10 productive scholars regardless of the author order. Jianhong Liu produced 19 of the 191 articles as sole or coauthors, followed by Lening Zhang with 16 articles. Among the ten most productive criminologists in Chinese criminology, eight were ethnic Chinese, except Steven F. Messner and Eric G. Lambert.

Table 2 Productivity ranking by publication numbers
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Table 3 is a ranking that takes authorship into consideration. This is based on the authorship weights by Kleck et al. (2007). Jianhong Liu is still ranking at the first place, and Lening Zhang falls to the third place. Eight of the top 10 scholars in Table 3 are also in the top 10 productive list of Table 2 in which authorship was not taken into account. Susan Trevaskes and Jianhua Xu are new faces in the weighted ranking. Maybe because they are habitual sole authors and researchers, which gives them more credits per article. In the current study, we find that there are in total 228 authors sharing the 191 articles, that is, 0.84 article per person, while the top 10 productive criminologists comprised only 4.4% of the total authors but generated 30.2% of the total publications in Chinese criminology (Table 3).

Table 3 Productivity ranking by weighted authorship
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Table 4 is the productivity ranking, considering both authorship and journal prestige.Footnote 13 This weighting system takes both the journal’s quality and the contribution that an author made to the article into account to comprehensively reflect the scholarly influence. In this ranking, Jianhong Liu is still the prolific leader of Chinese criminology, followed by Lening Zhang. After a check against the to-date CVs of the top 10 stars, we find that only Steven F. Messner and Susan Trevaskes are not ethnic Chinese; however, only Jianhong Liu is from a greater China institution—University of Macau. The other eight are all based at US universities, and one is from an Australian university. Eight of them are full professors; two are associate professors. Some of them are CCJ department heads such as Lening Zhang and Kam C. Wong.

Table 4 Individual productivity ranking by total credits
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Authors’ institutions of employment when the article was published have also been recorded. Table 5 shows that in the current study, there are three Hong Kong-based universities: City University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong, and Chinese University of Hong Kong ranking in the top 10 productive institutions, which stands at the first, third, and seventh places, respectively. However, there are no individual stars from these three universities. This demonstrates the tradition and strength of Hong Kong in Chinese criminology. Meanwhile, it is not surprising that University of Nevada, Wayne State University, Griffith University, University of Toledo, and Oklahoma State University enter into the top 10 Chinese criminological research “factories,” because they own top 10 “producers” (see Table 4). Though Jianhong Liu is the most productive author, the University of Macau does not appear in the institutional ranking. This is because he was a previous faculty member of Rhode Island College before his commitment to University of Macau in 2007, which greatly partakes of the credits of the latter one and takes the former into this list. Similarly, because of Kam C. Wong’s shifting employment, nor does Xavier University appear in this ranking.

Table 5 Most productive institutions in Chinese criminology
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Most-Cited Scholars

Table 6 indicates that Steven F. Messner is the most-cited scholar in Chinese criminology, having been cited 115 times in 43 of the 191 articles, followed by Lening Zhang (108 times) and Jianhong Liu (92 times). Among the 20 most-cited scholars, Chinese faces and their international counterparts share an approximately even split (9 to 11). While from the context of global criminology, only Francis T. Cullen, Robert J. Sampson, and David P. Farrington are also the top 20 cited scholars in 20 CCJ journals in 2005 (Cohn and Farrington 2012a). That is to say, the majority of influential scholars in Chinese criminology are not the most-cited ones in the general CCJ enterprise. Regarding research interests, scholars such as Lening Zhang, Lu Hong, Michael Robert Dutton, and Borge Bakken claimed China as their specialization in their CVs or profile webpages. Jianhong Liu, Liqun Cao, Hong Lu, and Bin Liang focus on criminology from a comparative perspective. Among the top 20 cited scholars, Robert J. Sampson and David P. Farrington are Stockholm Prize holders. Robert J. Sampson, Steven F. Messner, David P. Farrington, and Francis T. Cullen are past presidents of the ASC. Jianhong Liu is the founding President of the Asian Criminological Society and the recipient of Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award. The status and achievement of the identified scholars can reflect their scholarly influence and demonstrate the validity of this study. One person who should be specially mentioned is Zedong Mao, the founding father of the PRC. Chairman Mao has been cited 23 times in these 191 articles, ranking at the 36th most cited in the current study.

Table 6 Twenty most-cited scholars in Chinese criminology
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Gordon and Vicari (1992) suggested that the most productive scholars are indeed also the most-cited and influential scholars. While from the comparison of productive and top 10 cited scholars in Chinese criminology in Table 7, we can see only four prolific stars still survive in the citation competition. Jianhong Liu slightly descends from the most productive scholar to the third most-cited one. Lening Zhang and Hong Lu stay at the same place in both rankings. Steven F. Messner becomes the cited champion in Chinese criminology. The reason why Dean G. Rojek and Borge Bakken are influential in citation but not in productivity is possibly that their frequently cited works are books or chapters in books which are not included in the productivity analysis of the current study (see Table 8).

Table 7 Top 10 productive and cited scholars in Chinese criminology
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Table 8 Top 15 most-cited publications in Chinese criminology
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Most-Cited Works

The cited works have also been identified by this study (Table 8). The most-cited publication by these 191 articles is Policing and Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to ‘The People’ (Dutton 1992), which has been cited by 25 articles (13.1% of the total). China Law Yearbook and China Statistical Yearbooks are the most important published data sources for crime and criminal justice researches in China (Liu 2008), so it is no wonder that they rank as the second and fourth most-cited publications in the current study. Michael R. Dutton, Dean G. Rojek, and Borge Bakken et al. who among the top 20 cited scholars also have sole-authored works rank among the most influential publications. Ten of the 13 academic works (two Yearbooks are excluded) were published before the year of 2000. Another evident pattern is that most of the top cited works are China focused, especially on the social control of China. Only Crime, Shame and Reintegration (Braithwaite 1989) is not a region-orientated one, but a theoretical masterpiece of criminology. Braithwaite (2002, 2015) regarded Confucius as the most important philosopher of restorative justice, and shaming in a reintegrative manner grows well in the communitarian culture of the east (Braithwaite 1989), so appearance of this work here makes sense. Among the top 15 cited works, only Urban Life in Contemporary China by Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish is from the perspective of sociology rather than criminology. In the most-cited work, Dutton (1992) invited readers to an exploration of how it can construct a context in which China’s regimes for social punishment and regulation can be understood and examined. By applying Foucault’s genealogical method, he created a historical view of China’s traditional systems of social regulation and control and suggested that the arrangement of the technologies of control and reform of the individual outside prisons can be interpreted as part of a piecemeal response to a crisis in socialism precipitated by economic reform (Dutton 1992). Dutton’s work has initiated theoretical and methodological wisdom to understand the landscape of social control of China for both western and eastern scholars with an interest in China and become a classic with a high scholarly influence. Another popularly cited work by Tanner (1999) looked into the “Strike Hard” policy of China. Given that social control research in the west suffered from insufficient source materials and overabundant ideological commitments at that time, Tanner’s work both thoughtfully reflected the real-time problems and well researched and documented the arguments around the Strike Hard of Chinese criminal justice in the 1980s (Dutton 2000). Many of the materials that it gathered are hard to get and classify, which strengthened its values and planted a flag for following researchers interested in CCJ topics in China.

Discussion and Conclusion

Discussion of Findings

From the previous findings, it is not difficult to conclude that there are three groups of people who are influential in Chinese criminology. These include those who have a general impact on criminology all over the world. They are either leaders of prestigious criminological associations or outstanding CCJ prize holders whose scholarly influence has been analyzed by prior studies. Their wisdom, such as Sampson and Farrington’ life course study and Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming theory, has dramatically expanded the territory of contemporary criminology, and Chinese criminology has been influenced by them. The second group consists of the early western scholars between the 1980s and 1990s who had an oriental interest. Their works brought a general picture of Chinese criminology, especially the social control of China, to western academia and boosted the enlightenment and insights of their successors in criminological research in China. The third group accommodates a group of ethnic Chinese whose prior education and current careers are based on US universities (Hebenton and Jou 2010). They are outstanding both in the citation and in the productivity analysis of this study.Footnote 14 This group seems to be the most important one. Two decades after the Open Door Policy since 1978 witnessed a wave of studying abroad in China under the instruction of Deng Xiaoping that “I support for sending students in thousands to study abroad, rather than just several ones.” (Wang 2014). After checking the CVs of scholars who have influenced Chinese criminology, especially those who are outstanding both in productivity and in citation, we can find that most of the third group was once in the “studying abroad wave.” Ross and Dai (2012) conducted a survey on 16 scholars of China who earned doctorates of CCJ in the USA and stayed there during the past two decades. Some profiles were revealed. For example, more than half of them (56.2%) were 41 years of age or older. The majority stayed in the USA because of better job prospects. Thirteen have published research articles on topics related to CCJ of PRC, and 87.5% of scholars have presented at least one or more papers on the PRC at US conferences with the numbers ranging from 3 to 30. We are not able to confirm that those scholars targeted by Ross and Dai were those located in the current study, but we should accept the fact that Chinese criminology is dynamic. This is ultimately a result of local–global interaction by translating ideas and communicating with foreign scholars and collaborators. The wisdom and interest from overseas, especially by those influential scholars (e.g., Broadhurst and Liu 2004; Liang and Lu 2006; Zhang et al. 2007), have had self-reflexive impacts on the nature of domestic criminology (Hebenton and Jou 2010). How the “local” interacts with the “overseas” is still not clear. What is more, in the current study, we can hardly find domestic products (individuals, institutions, and publications) that have a significant influence on the CCJ of China. Besides, how exactly those identified influential scholars have an impact on Chinese criminology still needs elaborate research.

Limitations of the Current Study

One limitation of the current study is rooted in the general shortcomings of citation analysis itself (Cohn and Farrington 1995). Firstly, the number of citations that a certain scholar has in some ways depends on how many publications he/she has produced. Therefore, we cannot assert that the most-cited scholars automatically have high-quality works that are frequently cited and can influence others, because he/she may just own larger numbers of more accessibly citable works than others. Secondly, citations can also be negative, but we cannot differentiate whether one author cited another because of approval or criticism just by counting the citations. Thirdly, to some extent, citation is a personal matter. It may be possible that one cites another one’s work because they are acquaintances rather than because of the publication’s quality.

Another limitation of this study is the narrow article coverage. Though, the journal selection criterions and the article searching strategies of the current study are reasonable and efficient, all the analysis and conclusions are only based on 191 articles from 20 mainstream CCJ journals. There must be some other peer-reviewed articles being missed. Additionally, books, textbooks, and conference papers, etc. are not included for productivity analysis, which would consequently discount the validity of our conclusion, both for productivity and for citation ranking.

The fundamental flaw of this research is that the aim of the current study is to explore the scholarly influence of the criminology of China, yet no document in Chinese entered the data for analysis. Though our citation analysis has located some Chinese publications, no patterns are found because of the limited numbers.

Suggestions for Future Research

Expanding journal and article coverage can strengthen the validity of conclusions. E-databases can also be utilized to search for articles. The starting date could be pushed back before 2000 to trace the footprints of the development of Chinese criminology, and then, more patterns may be unveiled such as longitudinal changes of scholarly influence within different developmental periodizations.

Large numbers of Chinese publications and local criminologists should also be considered. This will portray Chinese criminology more comprehensively. Not only the crime patterns of China, but also the scholarly influence of scholars and institutions, academic fruit, and criminological ecology within the PRC can be more accessible to the international scholars. This will bring more Chinese contributions to the knowledge growth of the whole criminological field. However, the issue of how to standardize the measurement of prestige of publications across Chinese and English deserves further exploration.

The current study only focuses on the PRC, so future research can also be conducted in a comparative manner between the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Then, both the similarities and diversities of criminological development in Greater China, where cultural consanguinity and political diversity coexist, can be explored.

Last but not least, a lot of ethnic Chinese criminologists, whose careers are based on US universities, have been identified by this study. A further exploration can be conducted on these scholars, especially for the most influential ones both in productivity and in citation. For example, several of them habitually coauthor articles, so advanced bibliometric analysis can reveal the academic networks between them. Their career and publication trajectory may also indicate the development of Chinese criminology and its market in the whole criminological enterprise and can reflect how western criminology is affecting the Chinese tradition.