Citation analysis of randomized experiments in criminology and criminal justice: a research note

In recent years multiple studies have used citation analysis as a way to examine the most cited scholars and works in criminology and criminal justice and its subfields. This study is the first to focus on the most cited randomized experiments in criminological research. Using citation counts from both Social Science Citation Index and Google Scholar, and multiple sources of randomized experiments, I present the most cited experiments in six areas: policing, courts, corrections, schools, community, and early prevention. Experiments published in non-criminological (e.g., medical) journals tend to be the most cited, and early prevention research is generally cited most frequently of the six categories. I conclude by considering possible reasons why certain experiments are more cited than others.