“Which Group Are You In?”: A Preliminary Investigation of Group‐Based Publication Trajectories of Criminology and Criminal Justice Scholars

Abstract

This study employs Nagin and Land’s (1993; Criminology, 31, 327–362) group‐based trajectory modeling procedure to examine the scholarly productivity of 204 criminology and criminal justice scholars currently employed in PhD granting programs. The results indicate that there are three groups of scholars that publish in a large number of multidisciplinary journals at different rates in their first six years post‐PhD: one group begins low, slightly increasing over time, yet ending low; another group begins with a moderate rate, noticeably increasing over time, and ending strong; and a third group of scholars starts high, surging even higher over time, and ending averaging well above the typical “two” publications per year. When group‐based trajectories were estimated taking into account the number of publications in eight “elite” criminology and criminal justice journals, three similar trajectory groups emerge, although the percentage of scholars in each of the three groups changes considerably. Additional analyses demonstrate that there are factors that also significantly distinguish group membership. Study limitations and implications are discussed.

Notes

1. More specifically, the BIC values for the linear model were −1471.53 (total publications) and −811.85 (top‐eight publications) compared with the BIC values for the quadratic model (total publications = −1483.07; top‐eight publications = −818.80) and the cubic model (total publications = −1492.52; top‐eight publications = −823.45).