What Journals are the Most Cited Journals in Criminology and Criminal Justice’s “Big Three” Journals?

Recently, scholars have sought to learn more about scholarly activity within the fields of criminology and criminal justice (CCJ). Research in this area has examined which departments have the most productive faculty, which scholars are the most productive, and which journals are the most prestigious. However, no study of which we are aware has determined what journals criminologists are most likely to cite in their scholarly research. In this study, we rank the most influential journals by the number of times those journals were cited between 2009 and 2013 in Criminology, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly. Our analyses suggest that Criminology is clearly the most influential CCJ journal in terms of citations, while the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and the American Journal of Sociology remain influential in CCJ as well.