What Guides Us

Our values motivate everything we do: how we take submissions, review, and publish.

Openness: Information wants to be free; ditto knowledge and understanding. Articles in Criminal Justice and Criminology should be a public good: free to read and share. This benefits everyone: authors, fellow academics, students, policymakers, practitioners, and the general public. We care too much about Criminal Justice and Criminology to put a price tag on it.

Innovation: The JQCJC (“Qualitative Criminology”) is about making and trying new ideas. Qualitative Criminology is a vehicle for sharing them. But Qualitative Criminology is more than that. We not only encourage innovation; we do it and enable it, like never before in Criminal Justice and Criminology. Because of our publishing technology, for example, we are the best place to disseminate non-textual media within articles.

Inclusivity: SWACJ started the journal to help give qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology scholars a voice. All forms of qualitative research are part of the conversation at Qualitative Criminology. Moreover, we actively speak to quantitative researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

Democracy: It is impractical for every scholar in the disciplines to vote on whether a paper should be published in Qualitative Criminology. Instead, then, up to three reviewers are given the responsibility. They represent our community. For an explanation of the review process, please see the section on “How We Review.”

Efficiency: No paper can be made perfect through review. Time to decisions should be hurried, but not rushed. For the sake of authors and reviewers, the editor will “desk reject” those papers deemed unlikely to be accepted for publication. For other submissions, we will use each paper’s reviews to accept or reject it for publication.

Authenticity: Our strategies for being efficient and democratic are designed, in part, to prevent reviewers and the editor from unduly shaping papers. Publications should maximally reflect their authors. Qualitative Criminology articles are authentic to their authors.

Transparency: Bentham wrote that “the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave.” The editor is open to criticism. I will make mistakes. What the journal won’t do is be secretive about the process behind decisions. Have a question? Email the editor to ask.