Earlier this month Thomson Reuters published the 2007 Journal Citation Reports, allowing academics to evaluate the relative influence of various journals in their field. Using data on article citations and journal readership, the JCR "provides a systematic, objective way to evaluate the world's leading journals and their impact and influence in the global research community." I've listed the top ten journals -- ranked according to impact factor -- for various social science disciplines below. The name of the journal is followed by the impact factor in parentheses. You can search for complete JCR rankings by discipline here, though this link may not function properly for those not using a university IP address.CRIMINOLOGY/PENOLOGY
(Rank out of 29 journals)
- Criminology (2.344)
- Crime & Delinquency (1.796)
- Criminal Justice & Behavior (1.672)
- Sexual Abuse (1.643)
- Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (1.559)
- British Journal of Criminology (1.296)
- Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency (1.294)
- Journal of Quantitative Criminology (1.229)
- Punishment & Society (1.189)
- Journal of Interpersonal Violence (1.171)
(Rank out of 96 journals)
- American Journal of Sociology (3.338)
- American Sociological Review (3.277)
- British Journal of Sociology (2.449)
- Annual Review of Sociology (2.400)
- Global Networks (1.886)
- Sociology of Health & Illness (1.759)
- Journal of Marriage & the Family (1.756)
- Economy & Society (1.678)
- Social Networks (1.644)
- Social Problems (1.577)
(Rank out of 28 journals)
- Journal of Women's Health (1.522)
- Gender & Society (1.400)
- Women's Health Issues (1.338)
- Psychology of Women Quarterly (1.253)
- Gender, Work & Organization (1.185)
- Violence Against Women (1.122)
- Social Politics (0.972)
- European Journal of Women's Studies (0.698)
- Signs (0.671)
- Sex Roles (0.652)
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4 comments:
Greetings from another Criminology blogsite
http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/
I do wonder about the way the impact factor is calculated - in that it only looks for citation up to 2 years after publication.
It looks to me like that means that any citations of an excellent and influential article published in currently minor (fledgling) journal would be penalised by the fact that the top journals have a waiting list of about 12-18 months for papers that have been accepted by them.
Surely that means that the current top journals will always be top of the citation list so long as they have a delay of more than 12 months in publishing papers that may cite articles in other fledgling journals?
Seems like a duff system to me.
Welcome! Thanks for the comments -- the time lag issue is one I hadn't considered before.
I have to confess to being slightly bemused while compiling the information for this post. According to impact factor, Criminology remains the gold standard -- the highest-ranking criminology journal. As you can see, sociology's top journal (AJS) has an impact factor of 3.3, which is somewhat higher. Out of curiosity, I checked the impact factors of top journals in other disciplines to see where Crim's 2.344 score ranks. Here's a small sampling:
Business:
Academy of Management Journal
5.017
Clinical Psychology:
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
5.060
Law:
Harvard Law Review
5.859
And, just for fun...
Medicine:
New England Journal of Medicine
52.59!!!
Egads!! Now, is it fair to compare a criminology journal to a medical journal? Of course not. Much as we take pride in our research, we're not curing diseases here, folks. Still, I do think it helps to put things into perspective a bit to see that, according to impact factors, the number one medical journal outranks the number one criminology journal by a factor of 25.
Humbling or just plain depressing? You decide. : )
Well there is a lot of quackery in criminology and crime reduction
see:
http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Quackery
One of my team runs the free access Internet Journal of Criminology
http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/
...I bet it has a low impact factor but it provides a lot more service to fledgling criminologists than mainstream journals. As well as publishing peer reviewed papers it published primary research (non peer reviewed) and 1st Class undergrad and post-grad essays.
Does the IJC have an impact factor?
"top journals always being top...." Look at how JQ tanked from #2 last year to #14. Crime and Delinquency had a similar increase. That is just crazy.
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