QUT is celebrating the rapid climb of The International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy to the top-ranked law journal in Australia by Scopus.
Founded only six years ago, with the technical support of the QUT Library, its chief editors, criminologists QUT School of Justice head Professor Kerry Carrington and Professor John Scott from the QUT Crime and Justice Research Centre, said the journal had only just become eligible for ranking in Scopus, after two years of data collection.
Scopus is the world's largest database of abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed research articles.
“It is extremely gratifying that a journal from the Global South is ranked in the second quartile for journal quality,” Professor Carrington said.
“It’s a significant accolade for a new journal from the Global South, given the way the Scopus database is skewed towards journals in the English-speaking countries of the Global North.
“In 2015, the journal met Scopus evaluation as a high-quality international journal.”
It is also included in Web of Science; DOAJ; ARC Excellence in Research Australia, Proquest; Ulrich; EBSCO; Australian Policy Online (APO); National Library of Australia’s Trove; Paperity. The journal has had more than 250,000 downloads since its inception.
Professor Carrington has pioneered the reorientation of criminology towards the southern hemisphere or Global South “where the worst and highest prevalence of crime and violence occurs”.
"The discipline of criminology has neglected the 'south' and been dominated by the experience of the Anglophone countries from the Global North for the past 100 years. Our journal and our biennial conference aim to correct this imbalance,” Professor Carrington said.
“A key to the journal’s success is its international editorial board, comprising 60 distinguished scholars from across the world.
“Another essential ingredient is the journal’s DOAJ seal of approval awarded to journals that achieve a high level of open access and adhere to best practice in scholarly publishing standards.”
Media contact: Rose Trapnell, QUT Media, 3138 2361, 0407 585 901 or media@qut.edu.au
