From luminary to lesser-known: The declining influence of criminology textbook authors on scholarship

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Abstract
I reanalyze four citation studies of criminology/criminal justice journals and books to demonstrate that the authors of criminology textbooks in past years, considered as a group, were better-known scholars than the authors of textbooks today. When authors/co-authors of criminology textbooks published from 1936 to 1965 are compared with authors/co-authors of criminology textbooks published from 1984 to 1993, many more of the former ranked among the most frequently cited scholars of their time. I conclude with some thoughts about why so few prominent scholars today write criminology textbooks.