Ranking multiple authors in criminal justice scholarship: An examination of underlying issues

Abstract

The rapid increases in technology and communication over the past 20 years are undoubtedly providing scholars greater opportunity to collaborate on research. But collaboration brings with it a number of concerns for individuals embarking on such endeavors, as well as entire fields within academia. Of particular concern to this study is the perceived fairness of authorship ranking in multiple‐authored scholarship. In order to examine the extent to which such problems exist in criminology and criminal justice, 123 authors of collaborative scholarship found in 15 journals in the field for 1999 and 2000 were surveyed. The majority of researchers were found to have experienced disagreement over authorship ranking sometime during their careers. The implications of this finding and others are discussed.