Introduction

Research on scholarly influence has a long history within the field of criminology and criminal justice (CCJ), dating back to Evaluating criminology in the 1970s (Wolfgang et al. 1978). Scholarly influence has largely been examined within three streams of research, studying (1) the publication productivity of university faculty in academic journals and textbooks to evaluate CCJ programs (see, e.g., Kleck and Barnes 2011), (2) the trajectory of “academic stars” from CCJ and sociology graduate programs who became prolific in the field (see, e.g., Long et al. 2011), and (3) the most influential scholars and topics during a particular time period based on citation counts in journals and books (see, e.g., Cohn et al. 2013).

Research on scholarly influence from an international perspective has largely focused on the third stream of research, tracking citations and identifying the top scholars and works in CCJ within British, American, Canadian, and Australian and New Zealand journals. The findings of this research have generally been consistent over time, with the most-cited scholars most often American (e.g., most recently, Robert J. Sampson) or British (e.g., David P. Farrington), versatile (i.e., with a variety of cited works), and with works most often cited in the areas of developmental and life-course criminology and criminal careers (see, e.g., Cohn and Farrington 1994b, 2012; Cohn et al. 2013). Recently, analyses including the European Journal of Criminology revealed similar findings, including that Robert J. Sampson was the most highly cited scholar and that developmental and life-course criminology and criminal careers tended to be the most highly cited topics (Cohn and Iratzoqui 2016).

Missing within this discussion is the potential influence of Asian criminology (Liu 2009). Research on Asian criminology has gained attention in recent years, with work discussing Asian populations within criminal justice (e.g., Johnson and Betsinger 2009) and the data sources used to conduct research on Asian samples (Liu 2008). However, an important consideration is the outlet in which these articles are published. Examinations of the influence of this research, and its scholars, have only rarely addressed Asian scholarship, and even more rarely studied Asian scholarly publications (see, e.g., Zhang 2017).

The current research addresses both Asian scholarship and Asian publications, by comparing scholarly influence as revealed in the main Asian criminology publication, Asian Journal of Criminology (AJC), with three of the main international criminology journals, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (ANZ) representing Australian and New Zealand criminology, Criminology (CRIM) representing North American criminology, and the European Journal of Criminology (EJC) representing European criminology, for the period between 2006 and 2015. This time period covered the first 10 years of publication of the AJC.

Measuring Scholarly Influence

As mentioned, one method of measuring scholarly influence focuses on identifying the most-cited scholars and works in a discipline, through the use of citations in outlets such as peer-reviewed scholarly journals (see, e.g., Cohn and Farrington 2012, for a detailed review of the literature). The use of citations as a valid measure of scholarly influence is based on the assumption that highly cited works are important to the scholars who cite these works (Meadows 1974). Citations imply influence, so the most highly cited scholars may be considered the most influential in the field. The body of research in this area has identified several elements of citation patterns that indicate influence, including (1) the overall influence of scholars, (2) the nature of scholarly influence, and (3) the reliability of measures of scholarly influence.

First, overall influence is determined by examining a scholar’s raw (or weighted) number of citations, counted in an individual journal and across multiple journals (see, e.g., Cohn and Farrington 1994a, 1994b); in textbooks, or in comparisons between journals and textbooks (Wright 2000, 2002); or even in graduate comprehensive examination reading lists (Giblin and Schafer 2008). The number of citations is influenced by the outlet in which works are published; the most influential scholars and works are those published in the major journals, because articles in these outlets are more likely to be widely read by, and thus influence, other scholars (Cohn and Farrington 1994a). The most-cited scholars and works also provide a means of identifying the most-cited research topics, such as developmental and life-course criminology and criminal careers (Cohn et al. 2013).

Second, the nature of scholarly influence requires a focus on citations of a particular scholar as well as on a scholar’s individual works. Using concepts developed in criminal career research, (Cohn and Farrington 1996, 2012) distinguished between the prevalence and frequency of citations, and the specialization and versatility of scholars. They suggested that a high prevalence of citations (i.e., citations of works in many different articles) may be a better measure of a scholar’s influence on a large number of other scholars than a high frequency of citations (i.e., citations of many different works in a few articles), which may reflect influence on only a few other scholars. Scholars may be specialized, in having one or two highly cited works, typically books and often presenting a major theory, or versatile, in having many different works cited, with no single work standing out as particularly highly cited.

A high frequency of citations is naturally associated with versatility, while a high prevalence may be associated with specialization. Research suggests that (1) a small number of works tend to be highly cited while most receive few or no citations (Wolfgang et al. 1978); (2) like “chronic offenders,” a small number of scholars tend to account for a disproportionate fraction of all citations (Cohn et al. 1998; Orrick and Weir 2011); and (3) the majority of highly cited scholars tend to be versatile in their influence upon the field (Cohn and Farrington 2012).

Research on scholarly influence has also considered the similarity between journals in identifying the most-cited scholars, because some findings may be specific to the journals used in the analyses. For example, studies of “mainstream” American journals would naturally favor American scholars, while research examining more international and less mainstream journals is likely to identify more international and/or specialized scholars (Cohn and Farrington 1999). In order to expand the scope of analysis, some scholars have encouraged criminological citation analyses to include sociology journals (Wright et al. 1999), as well as publications that focus on more specialized areas, such as police studies (Wright and Miller 1998) and critical criminology (Wright and Friedrichs 1998), and to include international scholarly journals (Cohn and Farrington 2007). If there is little similarity between the most-cited scholars in more specialized and international areas, compared to analyses based only on mainstream American criminology journals, a broader perspective may be needed to produce generalizable findings.

Asian Criminology

Criminological research in Asia has largely gone unnoticed by mainstream American criminology. While a growing number of articles consider the impact of Asian ethnicity on a variety of criminological issues, including perceptions of the police (Wu 2014), criminal sentencing (Franklin and Fearn 2015; Johnson and Betsinger 2009), and victimization (Peguero et al. 2015), much less attention has been given to the impact of Asian research and Asian scholars on CCJ internationally. As the above literature suggests, citation research can serve to illuminate not just the current focus of CCJ, by identifying the most-cited scholars and most influential works, but it can also indicate the likely directions that the field will take in the future. Given that Asian criminology has faced a number of difficulties in expanding compared to other international areas (e.g., European, Australian, and New Zealand criminology), largely tied to modernization, lack of resources, and differences between different Asian countries, it is important to identify the main emphases of this new stream of criminology as it develops and the contribution it can make to international CCJ (Liu 2009).

Existing citation research on Asian criminology (Zhang 2017) has focused on its prevalence in the top criminology journals, without studying AJC. This is a significant omission, since it might be expected that AJC would be the main journal for Asian scholars and Asian research. This prior research suggests that, while criminological research tends to be based in and focused on the USA, scholars tend to be parochial in their publication habits (Barberet 2007). In other words, the majority of articles published in a particular outlet tend to be written by scholars within that country (Cohn 2011). Missing, then, is the analysis of Asian publications publishing scholarship by Asian scholars. By not including Asian publications, it may be that Asian scholars are underrepresented in citation research efforts. Thus, the focus of the current research is to present a more specialized analysis of Asian criminology, by studying citations in AJC and comparing them with three other major international journals.

Method

Sources of Citation Data

There are various potential sources of citation data, including the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), online scientific archives such as Google Scholar and Elsevier’s Scopus, and manual examinations of reference lists of academic publications. The SSCI, part of Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science (WoS), provides extremely wide coverage, including a large number of social science journals in a variety of disciplines. However, it also has significant limitations; for example, it includes self-citations, which should be excluded in citation research tracking a scholar’s influence on others in the field, and it does not correct for errors in a journal’s reference lists (e.g., spelling mistakes, incorrect initials) or lack of information in the original citation (e.g., the use of “et al.” or only the last names and first initials in a journal’s reference list) that would then be replicated in WoS. Other problems include the variable list of journals covered, the overrepresentation of journals from North America and Western Europe, and the general exclusion of citations in books and book chapters (Cohn and Farrington 1994b; Gabbidon and Collins 2012).

Online scientific archives like Google Scholar (GS), a free source that searches full-text academic journals and bibliographic databases in multiple languages, and Scopus, a paid database operated by Elsevier since 1996 that primarily focuses on natural and “hard” sciences, also provide citation data. These databases also suffer from noteworthy limitations, such as clarity about the true scope of the database regarding what journals, databases, and time periods are included and how often it is updated (i.e., GS), as well as missing information on records and variable search results based on what search terms are entered (i.e., Scopus) (Dess 2006). GS also includes self-citations.

Citation data may also be obtained directly from the reference lists of journals and books in a given field by manually counting the number of citations of a given scholar, work, or journal. This method can overcome the problems of the above sources, by eliminating self-citations, correcting names of scholars, and explicitly specifying what outlets are analyzed in what time periods. This method was developed and used successfully by Cohn, Farrington, and colleagues, in comparisons of British and American criminology (Cohn and Farrington 1990); international criminology including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Cohn and Farrington 1994a); and, more recently, comparisons that include European criminology (Cohn and Iratzoqui 2016). Information has been collected in 5-year increments (1986–1990, 1991–1995, 1996–2000, 2001–2005, 2006–2010, 2011–2015) in order to study changes in scholarly influence over time (Cohn and Farrington 2012; Cohn et al. 1998, 2013). The current study employs this approach and includes very careful checking.

Relevant Journals

The current analysis compares AJC with three other major English-language international criminology journals: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (ANZ), Criminology (CRIM), and the European Journal of Criminology (EJC). As mentioned, the 10-year time period from 2006 to 2015 was chosen because it covered the first 10 years of publication of AJC. CRIM, ANZ, and EJC have previously been used in international comparisons (Cohn and Farrington 2007; Cohn and Iratzoqui 2016). AJC is a relatively new journal that began publishing in 2006, expanding from two issues a year to four in 2012. AJC predominantly covers CCJ issues throughout Asian countries and contains many articles written by Asian scholars.

Counting Citations

For the present analyses, citation data were obtained from the reference lists of every article in all issues of each journal during the 2006–2015 publication period. “Articles” included research notes, comments, and rejoinders but excluded book reviews, book review articles, editorials, letters, and obituaries. Unpublished reports and conference papers were included if they were cited. Articles and authors were excluded if institutions were listed as authors, and all self-citations were excluded. Co-author citations, however, were included, which occur when the author of an article cites one of his/her own multi-authored works (Cohn and Farrington 1996). For example, if X cites an article by X and Y, the citation of X would be excluded as a self-citation, but the citation of Y would be included as a co-author citation.

Information was collected and checked in several stages. First, the reference pages were downloaded from online full-text copies of all journals. Next, a file was created that generated counts for each cited author in each article of each issue of all journals. When a reference had multiple authors, duplicate listings were made of the reference, in order to be able to count each co-author. Extensive checking was conducted to ensure that no references were omitted, to minimize the possibility of typographical errors, and to detect and, if possible, correct mistakes in reference lists, including misspelled names and incorrect or missing initials. Where references specified “et al.” rather than listing all authors, the names of all co-authors were obtained whenever possible. Finally, the complete list of references for all 10 years of each journal was then sorted alphabetically, and the number of times that each name occurred was counted. Citations to scholars with multiple names were merged where known. In the case of Chinese names, both orderings of first and second names were investigated and amalgamated where they were found (e.g., Hualing Fu and Fu Hualing).

The “nationality” of all authors of all articles in the four journals was also coded and analyzed. Nationality was determined by the author’s institutional or organizational affiliation, as stated in the article, rather than by citizenship. Importantly, this means that a scholar who is of Asian origin, but working and publishing within an American university, would be classified as American for the purposes of this analysis.

Results

Scholarly Influence in Four Journals

In AJC in 2006–2015, 141 articles were published by 263 individual authors (not necessarily different authors; a person would be counted more than once if they published more than one article). Of these authors, 108 (41.1%) were from the USA, 39 (14.8%) were from Australia, 27 (10.3%) were from Japan, 17 (6.5%) were from the UK, 16 (6.1%) were from Hong Kong, 13 (4.9%) were from mainland China, 9 (3.4%) were from South Korea, and 5 (1.9%) were from Taiwan. In total, 86 (32.7%) authors were based in Asian countries, compared with 110 (41.8%) in North America (USA or Canada), 40 (15.2%) in Australia or New Zealand, 26 (9.9%) in Europe, and 1 elsewhere (Fiji). These articles produced a total of 10,458 cited authors (again, not necessarily different persons), including 425 self-citations and 309 co-author citations. There were a total of 10,033 eligible cited authors, an average of 71 cited authors per article.

Table 1 shows the 49 most-cited authors in AJC in 2006–2015 (all those ranked up to 50). Each author was given a score of 51 minus their rank, which meant that all authors ranked 51 or greater received a score of 0. The most-cited author, Steven F. Messner, was cited 43 times. He had 27 different works cited in 19 different articles (13% of all articles in AJC), and 16 of these works were cited only once. His most-cited work, “A multilevel analysis of the risk of household burglary in the city of Tianjin, China” (Zhang et al. 2007), was cited four times. The second most-cited author, Robert J. Sampson, was cited 39 times. The highest ranked authors of Asian origin (based on their names) were Liqun Cao (ranked 6), Lening Zhang (ranked 7.5), Jianhong Liu (ranked 9), and Byongook Moon (ranked 10), but Cao, Zhang, and Moon were based in North America. Jianhong Liu was the highest ranked author who was based in Asia. Hualing Fu (based in Hong Kong), with 11 cites, narrowly missed being included in the top 50.

Table 1 Most-cited scholars in AJC
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In ANZ in 2006–2015, 217 articles were published by 479 individual authors. Of these, 310 (64.7%) were from Australia, 57 (11.9%) were from the USA, 44 (9.2%) were from the UK, 27 (5.6%) were from New Zealand, and 14 (2.9%) were from Canada. Only 6 authors (1.3%) were based in Asian countries. These articles produced a total of 20,615 cited authors, including 1414 self-citations and 1163 co-author citations. There were a total of 19,201 eligible cited authors, an average of 88 cited authors per article.

Table 2 shows the 49 most-cited authors in ANZ in 2006–2015. The most-cited author, Robert J. Sampson, was cited 139 times. He had 52 different works cited in 49 different articles (23% of all articles in ANZ), and 25 of these works were cited only once. His most-cited work, Crime in the making (Sampson and Laub 1993), was cited 17 times. The second most-cited author, David P. Farrington, was cited 99 times. None of the most-cited authors was based in an Asian country.

Table 2 Most-cited scholars in ANZ
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In CRIM in 2006–2015, 316 articles were published by 818 individual authors. Of these, 710 (86.8%) were from the USA, 41 (5.0%) were from the Netherlands, 18 (2.2%) were from the UK, 14 (1.7%) were from Australia, and 13 (1.6%) were from Canada. Only 1 (0.1%) author was based in an Asian country (Malaysia). These articles produced a total of 46,314 cited authors, including 2197 self-citations and 2096 co-author citations. There were a total of 44,117 eligible cited authors, an average of 140 cited authors per article.

Table 3 shows the 49 most-cited authors in CRIM in 2006–2015. The most-cited author, Robert J. Sampson, was cited 663 times. He had 103 different works cited in 194 different articles (61% of all articles in CRIM), and 25 of these works were cited only once. His most-cited work was again Crime in the making (Sampson and Laub 1993), and it was cited 65 times. The second most-cited author, John H. Laub, was cited 272 times. None of the most-cited authors was based in an Asian country.

Table 3 Most-cited scholars in CRIM
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In EJC in 2006–2015, 300 articles were published by 695 individual authors. Of these, 147 (21.2%) were from the UK, 144 (20.7%) were from the Netherlands, 82 (11.8%) were from the USA, 43 (6.2%) were from Belgium, 41 (5.9%) were from Finland, 41 (5.9%) were from Sweden, 31 (4.5%) were from Switzerland, 20 (2.9%) were from Germany, 17 (2.4%) were from Australia, 15 (2.2%) were from Spain, 14 (2.0%) were from Norway, 12 (1.7%) were from Italy, 12 (1.7%) were from Portugal, and 10 (1.4%) were from Israel. No author was based in any Asian country. These articles produced a total of 26,281 cited authors, including 1654 self-citations and 1476 co-author citations. There were a total of 24,627 eligible cited authors, an average of 82 cited authors per article.

Table 4 shows the 51 most-cited authors in EJC in 2006–2015. The most-cited author, Robert J. Sampson, was cited 168 times. He had 50 different works cited in 73 different articles (24% of all articles in EJC), and 22 of these works were cited only once. His most-cited work was again Crime in the making (Sampson and Laub 1993), and it was cited 25 times. The second most-cited author, David P. Farrington, was cited 162 times. Once again, none of the most-cited authors was based in an Asian country.

Table 4 Most-cited scholars in EJC
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Comparing the Four Journals

Of the 49 most-cited authors in AJC, 18 (36.7%) were also among the 49 most-cited authors in ANZ, 19 (38.8%) were also among the 49 most-cited authors in CRIM, and 21 (42.9%) were also among the 51 most-cited authors in EJC. Therefore, the degree of overlap between AJC and the other three journals was quite similar. Of the 49 most-cited authors in ANZ, 20 (40.8%) were also among the 49 most-cited authors in CRIM and 22 (44.9%) were among the 51 most-cited authors in EJC. Finally, of the 49 most-cited authors in CRIM, 24 (49.0%) were among the 51 most-cited authors in EJC, indicating marginally the greatest overlap between journals.

In order to investigate scholarly influence in all four journals, each author was given a score of 51 minus their rank, and the scores were summed over the four journals. This measure gives equal weight to each journal. If the raw citation counts had been summed, authors who were highly cited in journals with a high number of citations per article (i.e., CRIM) would have predominated.

Table 5 shows the most-cited 49 scholars on this combined measure. Robert J. Sampson was the most-cited scholar, with an almost-perfect score of 199. He was the most-cited scholar in three of the journals and second in the other (AJC). Alex R. Piquero was the second most-cited scholar on this measure. Ten of the top 14 scholars were highly ranked in all four journals, and the other four were highly ranked in three journals. Most of these scholars were based in the USA; David P. Farrington was the highest ranked scholar from the UK (ranked 4), and John Braithwaite was the highest ranked scholar from Australia (ranked 16). Jianhong Liu was the only scholar based in Asia who was in this top 50.

Table 5 Most-cited scholars in four journals combined
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Table 6 shows the most-cited works of the 10 most-cited scholars. Most of these scholars, and consequently most of these works, were within the area of developmental and life-course criminology. David P. Farrington had the largest number of different works cited (190), followed by Alex R. Piquero (162). Travis Hirschi (37) and Michael R. Gottfredson (28) had the fewest number of different works cited. These two scholars had a small number of works that were very highly cited, while Farrington and Piquero had no single work that was very highly cited. Robert J. Sampson dominated because he not only had a large number of different works cited (121) but he also had a small number of works that were very highly cited.

Table 6 Most-cited works of the most-cited scholars in all four journals
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Conclusions

The current research focused on scholarly influence in and of Asian criminology, and it yielded several noteworthy findings. First, the inclusion of AJC in the analyses did not greatly change the list of most-cited scholars and works. The citation patterns in AJC were not dramatically different from those in the more established international journals. Generally, the most-cited scholars in AJC overlapped with the most-cited scholars in ANZ, CRIM, and EJC. The degree of overlap between any two of these journals was quite similar, although there was a slight tendency for CRIM and EJC to overlap most.

Second, the most-cited scholars in AJC tended to be based in the USA, were often working in the area of developmental and life-course criminology, and tended to be highly cited in the other three journals (e.g., Robert J. Sampson, John H. Laub, Alex R. Piquero, Daniel S. Nagin, Rolf Loeber, and Marvin D. Krohn). The large number of highly cited US scholars is partly attributable to the large number of US authors of AJC articles, but this in turn reflects the world dominance of US research in criminology and criminal justice. While developmental and life-course criminologists were highly cited in AJC, researchers in many other CCJ areas (e.g., theory and penal policy) were also highly cited.

Finally, few scholars based in Asia were highly cited in ANZ, CRIM, or EJC, at least partly because few Asian scholars authored articles in these journals. Even in AJC, where one third of the authors were based in Asia, and where most of the research was relevant to Asia, few Asian scholars were highly cited. We conclude that Asian scholars should be encouraged to carry out research that would interest international scholars (e.g., on developmental and life-course criminology and criminal careers) and to submit their work for publication not only in AJC but also in other international journals.