Editor’s Introduction

Encouraging High-Quality Manuscripts and Reviews

Good journals rely on high-quality manuscripts that are a good fit for the journal’s mission, and excellent reviewers. As consumers of research, we trust authors to submit manuscripts for consideration to the appropriate journal, and we trust the process of blind peer review to refine and select solid research findings and theoretical insights. All editors know that the search for manuscripts and reviewers is an ongoing process. We will be actively recruiting manuscripts from conference presentations, granting institutions, and other means. To reward excellent articles, we are reinstating the “Best Article of the Year Award.” We will no longer be requiring a manuscript submission fee as of January 1, 2015.

Reviewing is a scholarly responsibility but unlike authoring a manuscript, blind peer reviewing is a time-consuming but amazingly thankless task. Finding the right reviewer for each manuscript is the editor’s task, and one hopes that reviewers will take the time to produce thoughtful and constructive reviews. We have a renewed editorial board that will help in this task and encouraging, training, and thanking reviewers is one of my priorities.

Enduring Goals and Increased Diversity

Recently, I completed a book (Barberet, 2014) that examined women and crime issues (offending, victimization, and criminal justice professions) almost entirely from an international lens. Like most book projects, this one offered an opportunity for unexpected reflections. In searching for literature to constitute a “baseline” for comparison, I was struck by the growth and sophistication in scholarship on women and crime in the United States and the Anglo-American world, generally. I found myself continually citing articles from Feminist Criminology, given its breadth of coverage. Upon comparing this scholarship with that around the globe, I was reminded of the ways in which women and girls are still invisible in criminology and of the important role of feminist research, theory, and praxis in remedying this situation. I reached three conclusions that inform my current editorship: the first is the enduring importance of women and girls; the second, the necessity of feminism as a response to gender inequality; and the third, the importance of criminology as a response to women’s injustice. Thus, I feel quite comfortable with continuing the work of past editors in ensuring that the journal embraces a wide range of scholarship in criminology (offending, victimization, social harm, criminal justice professions and institutional responses to crime and victimization, media and popular culture, theory and methods, policy, etc.). These areas can be stretched further to include the many types of injustice that are perpetuated the world over. I am also committed to ensuring that submissions reflect feminist thought and a feminist critique of criminology. Finally, I support the woman/girl-centric focus of the journal, along with other axes of oppression such as race, ethnicity, and class. Other aspects of identity such as citizenship, mobility (rural women, migrant women), indigenous status, and the war/peace continuum (refugee women, conflict and post-conflict scenarios) should be brought to bear in broadening intersectional approaches in feminist criminology.

In consonance with my past leadership of the ASC Division of International Criminology, I would like to increase the diversity of submissions to ensure that each issue has one international or comparative article. This is already a notable feature of Feminist Criminology. Bitna Kim and Alida V. Merlo (2014, p. 403), in their article in the DWC 30th Anniversary issue of Feminist Criminology, analyzed the international/comparative features of Feminist Criminology, noting that encouragingly, 21.6% of the articles in the first 7.5 years of the journal examined women and crime issues in other countries. Eighteen percent of the authors of articles over those years were affiliated with institutions abroad. Kim and Merlo (2014, p. 404) ask,

As the 30th Anniversary of the Division approaches, three questions are posed: Should Feminist Criminology attempt to attract even more international scholars and research or does it stay the course? Should the journal editorial board solicit and support more international/comparative studies? Should there be more board members from other countries? This may be an appropriate time to consider these questions.

In response, I say yes. I believe that the prestige of the journal will be enhanced by internationalization (resulting in wider citation), and that better global representation of articles can be achieved, beyond the English-speaking world. Of course, this can be done most successfully when combined with a diversity membership drive of the DWC, as well as encouraging cross-national research collaboration among feminist criminologists.

For starters, I have diversified the journal’s editorial board, both in terms of U.S.-based scholars and those from abroad. Twenty-one percent of the new editorial board are minority U.S.-based scholars, and another 21% are non-U.S.-based scholars; there is now at least one editorial board member for each region of the globe. These are Sonia Frías from Mexico; Nawal Ammar, Margaret Shaw, and Ruth Mann from Canada; Frances Heidensohn and Aisha Gill from the United Kingdom; Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic (former President of the European Society of Criminology) from Serbia; Karen Joe Laidler from Hong Kong; Kathleen Daly and Kerry Carrington from Australia; Chioma Onyige from Nigeria; and Laura Capobianco from UN Women. Past editor Jana Jasinski has agreed to stay on the editorial board and past editor Helen Eigenberg joins us as well. We welcome new U.S.-based editorial board members Johnna Christian, Nikki Jones, Janice Joseph, Toya Like-Haislip, Vera Lopez, Cara Rabe-Hempe, and Beth Richie. These changes, combined with the renewal of some long-standing contributors to the editorial board, will serve us well in advancing the journal’s mission during my four-year term.

Dissemination

Marketing the journal is a key priority, and disseminating the journal’s output to the wider public is always a concern for authors and editors alike. Sophia Puglisi, our new editor at SAGE, is fully on board with this objective and her team is excited to be producing podcasts for us (http://fcx.sagepub.com/site/misc/Index/Podcasts.xhtml). Please do consider a podcast when your manuscript is published in Feminist Criminology.

In conclusion, I am honored to continue the excellent work of past editors. As Helen Eigenberg noted in her 2010 editorial, “I have joked that Susan Sharp gave birth to the journal, I guided it through the toddler years, and now Jana [Jasinski] can move it to adolescence and beyond.” I am happy to guide the journal into emerging adulthood. I am excited by the possibilities that this journal’s editorship offers, and prepared to assume the responsibilities that this editorship entails.