Interdisciplinary Review of General, Forensic, Prison and Military Psychiatry and Psychology and the related subjects of Behavior and Law with the occasional notes and comments by Michael Novakhov, M.D. (Mike Nova).
You have no doubt heard of journal "rankings." A journal's rank conveys information about the impact and quality of a journal. This can be useful information for both authors and consumers. An author might want to consider a journal's prestige, and the difficulty getting published in it. For consumers -- including expert witnesses who might be relying on a particular article in court -- ranking can serve as a proxy for the accuracy and reliability of a journal's content. How much should the trier of fact trust the information in this journal?
But there are lots of methods for ranking journals -- the Impact Factor, the Eigenfactor, the h-index, just to name a few. And with the proliferation of journals in forensic psychology, it gets hard to keep track. Which journals have the best reputations? Which are the most cited? Which provide the broadest coverage of forensic psychology topics?
One popular way to rank-order journals is based on reference counts. How many times a journal is cited is an indicator of its reputation. In forensic psychology, according to an unpublished study by S. Black, the top-referenced journals are (in rank order):
Law and Human Behavior
Behavioral Sciences and the Law
British Journal of Psychiatry
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology
American Journal of Psychiatry
Criminal Justice and Behavior
Now, a researcher with training in both psychology and library science has taken a somewhat different approach, devising a clever content-analysis procedure to rank-order journals in our field.
Chris Piotrowski started by screening several texts in the field and choosing terms that are popular both in research and practice. The 16 terms were: eyewitness testimony, competency to stand trial, alcoholic blackouts, infanticide, sentencing, forensic evaluations, polygraph, malingering, jury selection, homicide, diminished capacity, insanity defense, child abuse, Daubert standard, child custody and expert witness.
Next he used PsycNET, "the recognized major bibliographic resource in the social and behavioral sciences that indexes scholarly and professional journals," to run keyword searches on his 16 terms. For each search term, he rank-ordered journals based on the frequency of hits; a journal's total ranking was obtained by summing across all 16 terms.
The winners were (in rank order):
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law
PsycCRITIQUES (formerly, Contemporary Psychology)
Law and Human Behavior
Behavioral Sciences and the Law
American Journal of Forensic Psychology
Journal of Psychiatry and Law
Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law
Mental & Physical Disability Law Reporter
American Journal of Psychiatry
American Psychologist
Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice
International Journal of Psychiatry and Law
Journal of Criminal Justice
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice
Journal of Applied Psychology
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology
Psychological Reports
British Journal of Psychology
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
I would be a little cautious about relying on this method, because the choice of keywords -- which is open to manipulation -- might influence the rankings. But as you can see, there is overlap between this method and the more traditional citation-count method used by Black. For instance, Law and Human Behavior and Behavioral Sciences and the Law made it into the top four, no matter which method was used. There are some noticeable differences as well, with several journals that were highly cited in Black's study not ranking high using this content analysis method.
For more information on the method and the exact scores for each journal, feel free to contact Dr. Piotrowski (HERE); I'm sure he will be happy to share a copy of the article, which is published in the current issue of the American Journal of Forensic Psychology.
Oh, in case you were wondering, that journal is number five on his list.
The article is: Top cited journals in forensic psychology: An analysis of the psychological literature (2012), American Journal of Forensic Psychology 30 (2), 29-38.
The trial of the right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik has been a field day in the international media, with Breivik's ice-cold bearing and callous statements playing to the headlines. For many of the journalists inside the courtroom, however, the first couple of days in Oslo were disappointing in terms of actual information.
The accused appeared to have no reason to worry about a gruelling cross examination. Often, the prosecution's questions resembled those that would be asked by psychologists, inquiring after his mental state. Although Breivik is one of the worst terrorists in Europe since the Second World War, perhaps the need to understand his actions has been greater than the urge to hold him accountable.
But as the trial resumed on Friday, news broke that the Bosnian investigative weekly Sloboda Bosna had named Breivik's mystery Serbian contact as Milorad Pelemis, a war criminal who participated in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Should this connection turn out to be true, it would be a vital piece of the puzzle of Breivik's international connections and the ideological underpinnings of the murders of 77 people in Oslo and Utoya in July.
In court, Breivik had explained that the Nato bombing of Serbia in 1999 was "the straw that broke the camel's back" when it came to his radicalisation. Srebrenica is often overlooked when discussing sources of inspiration for the anti-Muslim extreme right in Europe.
But some groups regard the Serbs as heroes for retaliating against the "Islamisation" of the Balkans; they're role models in the fight against a looming "Eurabia" (the conspiracy theory that Europe is being "colonised" by Muslims as part of a secret deal between the EU and the Arab world).
In his manifesto, Breivik calls war criminal Radovan Karadzic an "honourable crusader". He also denies the true nature of the Yugoslavia horrors. This is as common in the so-called "counter jihad" movement as Holocaust denials are in neo-Nazi circles. The author Robert Spencer, of the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) organisation, is one of the more influential polemicists spreading the claim that what happened in Srebrenica, and the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, is a myth.
The prosecution - and the first, heavily criticised psychiatric evaluation - tried to make Breivik's claims of an international network seem ludicrous, the daydreams of a megalomaniac.
Yet it has only been a couple of months since Germans were shocked by the unearthing of a neo-Nazi terror cell, Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, which had worked undisturbed for a decade. The prosecution has settled on the explanation that Breivik is a psychopath, going against many other psychiatric experts, and thereby ignores the far-right ideology from which he drew inspiration.
But Breivik is clever and well-spoken, the son of a diplomat from a stable country, and had no criminal record - he would have been an ideal terrorist agent, at least on paper. During his extensive period of preparation, he was never caught or even monitored by the police.
There are missing pieces to this puzzle and, naturally, Breivik's testimony is suspect. But this is what is known: Breivik was in Liberia in the spring of 2002 and flew to the UK from there. He claims to have met his Serbian contact in Monrovia (Milorad Pelemis was a mercenary there, according to Sloboda Bosna) and to have represented the contact at the founding meeting of an "international Christian military order" in London. Norwegian police have not found any evidence that the meeting took place or that the organisation existed. It has been verified that Breivik paid two brief visits to the Baltics in 2004, where he claimed to have received military training.
Page 2 of 2It would be no mystery if Breivik had sought contacts outside Norway. The Norwegian extreme-right scene is tiny and under constant surveillance. "If you wish to make things more complicated for the intelligence services, you have to cross national borders," Breivik told the court. His other statements in the past week, about years spent training with video games and his claims about "de-emotionalising" possibly indicate some sort of psychotic break, but Norwegian police have been remarkably uninterested in his international connections. It's certainly more convenient to dismiss him as a lone madman than to dig around Liberia and the Balkans.
Breivik claims to have met his contacts online. How real those contacts were, much less if they solidified into actual collaboration in the attacks, needs further investigation. But the far-right ideological influences that he cited are undeniable and should be a wake-up call for intelligence agencies that monitor militant Islamist forums and ignore their right-wing counterparts.
Throughout the trial, Breivik has said he was inspired by Al Qaeda - but has not named a specific inspiration for the July 22 attacks. The Srebrenica massacre, which took place over almost two weeks, ended on about July 22, 1995. Was Breivik's massacre of "Muslim-loving" youths an homage to that atrocity?
It remains to be seen whether he had practical support from other militant nationalists. But we already know that his ideology has adherents in the highest political assemblies. From the ex-Nazi Sweden Democrats in the north to Italy's Northern League separatists, and charismatic populists such as Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, similar ideas are growing in strength. It's not unlikely that more than one Anders Behring Breivik will cross the line from militant rhetoric to violence.
Lisa Bjurwald, based in Stockholm, is a freelance writer specialising in Europe's right-wing populist parties. Maik Baumgärtner is a Berlin-based freelance journalist and author specialising in right-wing extremism
One-page articleThe trial of the right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik has been a field day in the international media, with Breivik's ice-cold bearing and callous statements playing to the headlines. For many of the journalists inside the courtroom, however, the first couple of days in Oslo were disappointing in terms of actual information.
The accused appeared to have no reason to worry about a gruelling cross examination. Often, the prosecution's questions resembled those that would be asked by psychologists, inquiring after his mental state. Although Breivik is one of the worst terrorists in Europe since the Second World War, perhaps the need to understand his actions has been greater than the urge to hold him accountable.
But as the trial resumed on Friday, news broke that the Bosnian investigative weekly Sloboda Bosna had named Breivik's mystery Serbian contact as Milorad Pelemis, a war criminal who participated in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Should this connection turn out to be true, it would be a vital piece of the puzzle of Breivik's international connections and the ideological underpinnings of the murders of 77 people in Oslo and Utoya in July.
In court, Breivik had explained that the Nato bombing of Serbia in 1999 was "the straw that broke the camel's back" when it came to his radicalisation. Srebrenica is often overlooked when discussing sources of inspiration for the anti-Muslim extreme right in Europe.
But some groups regard the Serbs as heroes for retaliating against the "Islamisation" of the Balkans; they're role models in the fight against a looming "Eurabia" (the conspiracy theory that Europe is being "colonised" by Muslims as part of a secret deal between the EU and the Arab world).
In his manifesto, Breivik calls war criminal Radovan Karadzic an "honourable crusader". He also denies the true nature of the Yugoslavia horrors. This is as common in the so-called "counter jihad" movement as Holocaust denials are in neo-Nazi circles. The author Robert Spencer, of the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) organisation, is one of the more influential polemicists spreading the claim that what happened in Srebrenica, and the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, is a myth.
The prosecution - and the first, heavily criticised psychiatric evaluation - tried to make Breivik's claims of an international network seem ludicrous, the daydreams of a megalomaniac.
Yet it has only been a couple of months since Germans were shocked by the unearthing of a neo-Nazi terror cell, Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, which had worked undisturbed for a decade. The prosecution has settled on the explanation that Breivik is a psychopath, going against many other psychiatric experts, and thereby ignores the far-right ideology from which he drew inspiration.
But Breivik is clever and well-spoken, the son of a diplomat from a stable country, and had no criminal record - he would have been an ideal terrorist agent, at least on paper. During his extensive period of preparation, he was never caught or even monitored by the police.
There are missing pieces to this puzzle and, naturally, Breivik's testimony is suspect. But this is what is known: Breivik was in Liberia in the spring of 2002 and flew to the UK from there. He claims to have met his Serbian contact in Monrovia (Milorad Pelemis was a mercenary there, according to Sloboda Bosna) and to have represented the contact at the founding meeting of an "international Christian military order" in London. Norwegian police have not found any evidence that the meeting took place or that the organisation existed. It has been verified that Breivik paid two brief visits to the Baltics in 2004, where he claimed to have received military training. It would be no mystery if Breivik had sought contacts outside Norway. The Norwegian extreme-right scene is tiny and under constant surveillance. "If you wish to make things more complicated for the intelligence services, you have to cross national borders," Breivik told the court. His other statements in the past week, about years spent training with video games and his claims about "de-emotionalising" possibly indicate some sort of psychotic break, but Norwegian police have been remarkably uninterested in his international connections. It's certainly more convenient to dismiss him as a lone madman than to dig around Liberia and the Balkans.
Breivik claims to have met his contacts online. How real those contacts were, much less if they solidified into actual collaboration in the attacks, needs further investigation. But the far-right ideological influences that he cited are undeniable and should be a wake-up call for intelligence agencies that monitor militant Islamist forums and ignore their right-wing counterparts.
Throughout the trial, Breivik has said he was inspired by Al Qaeda - but has not named a specific inspiration for the July 22 attacks. The Srebrenica massacre, which took place over almost two weeks, ended on about July 22, 1995. Was Breivik's massacre of "Muslim-loving" youths an homage to that atrocity?
It remains to be seen whether he had practical support from other militant nationalists. But we already know that his ideology has adherents in the highest political assemblies. From the ex-Nazi Sweden Democrats in the north to Italy's Northern League separatists, and charismatic populists such as Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, similar ideas are growing in strength. It's not unlikely that more than one Anders Behring Breivik will cross the line from militant rhetoric to violence.
Lisa Bjurwald, based in Stockholm, is a freelance writer specialising in Europe's right-wing populist parties. Maik Baumgärtner is a Berlin-based freelance journalist and author specialising in right-wing extremism
