An Exploratory Social Network Analysis of the "Invisible College" of Experimental Criminology and Criminal Justice Scholarship in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2011-2020

The current study builds on extant publication productivity CCJ research by applying a social network analysis to examine the presence of an "invisible college" of scholarship in experimental CCJ scholarship. Relying on data from 298 articles and 678 unique authors published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology (JEC) from 2011 to 2020, the results suggest that publishing networks are largely decentralized, but many key networks do exist and those networks can have definitive leaders that are critical players in the network. Given the information that was derived from the present study, continued exploration into publishing networks is suggested using social network analysis techniques. Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.