Editorial

2023 – The Year in Review

As with last year (Kilkelly and Pleysier, 2023), this first editorial of 2024 aims to look back at the year just past – 2023 – to report to you, our readers and supporters, on trends and performance in the development of Youth Justice – An International Journal. The year 2023 was a very busy year for Youth Justice, with submissions up 43.2% on 2022. In particular, we received 63 new articles in 2023, and a total of 91 submissions were received, when revised articles are taken into account. As editors, we took a decision on 51 of those articles, with an acceptance rate of 39%, an increase from a 30% acceptance rate in 2022. In 2023, we published three issues, in Volume 23, comprising a total of 388 pages, up from 360 in 2022. This allowed us to publish 14 articles in 2023, a target we are keen to expand in 2024. Eleven articles were published in Open Access in 2023, as part of an institutional package, an increase from five in 2022.

Increasing Diversity in the Origin of Articles Received

In terms of the origins of the articles submitted, 32% of articles came from authors based in the United Kingdom, 19% from the United States, 11% from Australia and 10% from Canada. Although English speaking countries continue to dominate the vast majority of articles submitted to Youth Justice, in line with our ambitions set out last year, it is good to see an increasing number of articles from other regions and countries. For example, in 2023, 4% of articles submitted came from China, with articles received also from countries including: Vietnam, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines. Articles from European countries, including Italy, Germany, Turkey and the Netherlands were also among those received. Among those published in 2023 were articles from Australia, Vietnam, the United States, Denmark and Ireland as well as a comparative piece featuring the United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy and Poland. We are especially pleased with the continuing geographical reach of the journals although submissions from Africa and Asia continue to be very small in number and have, at times, struggled to reach the publishable standard associated with the journal. We are very keen to receive an increased number of submissions from authors in these regions, especially from the global south, so that youth justice scholarship can benefit from a more rich and diverse range of perspectives. We would especially like to receive articles from jurisdictions less frequently featured in the youth justice literature and from early career scholars who are invited to contact the editors informally prior to submission as part of our commitment to a supportive pre-review process. In this regard, future authors might want to check out the wide range of supports and resources that Sage offers. Available through the Journal Author Gateway, these include guidelines, services and explainers that help to support the publishing process. The Gateway also provides very useful reminders of the ways in which authors can share their work, including through open access.

Processing Times

The processing of articles continues to take longer than we would like, with decision to first decision taking an average time of 149 days in 2023 and time to final decision taking an average of 280 days. These both represent a regrettable increase on 2023 timelines. Although time to first decision remained relatively constant (it was an average of 143 days in 2022), time to final decision increased significantly – up from 232 days in 2022. Thankfully, our OnlineFirst process allows us to move more quickly to publication than with our print copy. The increased number of submissions has had an inevitable knock-on effect on our capacity to process articles as speedily as we would like. This has been made more difficult by the significant difficulties we continue to experience identifying suitable and willing reviewers for the articles received. This is especially acute with respect to the review of revised articles where reviewers can be reluctant to review a revised submission. We acknowledge that these timelines are a source of frustration for authors and we remain committed to bringing down processing times in 2024. On a more positive note, thanks to our colleagues in Sage, the time to online publication fell slightly in 2023, to an average of 29 days, down from an average of 31 days in 2022.

Reviewers

The increased number of submissions to the journal has obviously required a significant and increased investment of time and effort by our reviewers and we are grateful to everyone who has participated in the review process, without whom we would not be able to publish the journal. At the end of this editorial, we publish a formal note of gratitude to those who contributed to the review process in 2023 – we are indebted to each and every one of you.

At the same time, the availability of suitable reviewers to meet the increased demands of our author community remains our single greatest challenge as editors. We are grateful to everyone who responds positively to review requests – especially those who accept several such requests annually. At the same time, it is not unusual to have to issue multiple – sometimes as many as 10 – requests for reviews and many of those who accept the invitation to review struggle to complete the reviews on time leading to author frustration. While the increasing pressures of academic life are having a real impact on reviewer availability, it is important that we all play a part in the review process in order to maintain the quality and rigour of academic publishing in youth justice. In this regard, we will continue to draw on our Editorial Board in the first instance and inviting those who undertake repeat, ad hoc reviews the opportunity to be considered for membership of our editorial board. For all reviewers, there are several benefits to participating in the review process: first, it represents an important contribution to the field, an opportunity to give something back when as authors, we benefit, as part of the quid pro quo of the publishing experience. Second, it is an useful way to review new research, to be the first to read and comment on early career scholarship and emerging research ideas. Third, there are material benefits in that Sage offers a 60-day free trial as a thank you to reviewers for their work and as an incentive to further engage with the journal. This also benefits the journal by increasing usage among key readers, giving the journal exposure to reviewers of related journals. Sage has also partnered with Web of Science researcher profiles (formerly Publons) to give reviewers credit for their work and in recognition of the vital role reviewers play in delivering timely, quality-assured publication of work in Youth Justice. Reviewers will know that Youth Justice is fully integrated with the Web of Science platform, meaning that reviewers can opt-in as part of the review process to claim their reviews on their Web of Science researcher profile. In 2023, we had an uptake rate of 43%, representing 38 reviewers from 46 reviews. Those seeking to become reviewers for Youth Justice should contact the editors to express their interest, indicating their areas of expertise and availability. More generally, we will continue to develop ways that can reduce the burden on reviewers while enabling quality material to get as speedily into print as possible.

Increasing Editorial Diversity and Early Career Editorial Programme

As part of our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we are keen to diversify our editorial board, including through origin and background. With this editorial, we would especially like to invite reviewers from the global south who are interested in being appointed to the editorial board to get in touch with us directly. This year too, we are pleased to announce our Early Career Editor programme, which we hope will enable inexperienced or less experienced reviewers to be appointed to the editorial board as Early Career members; this will allow those new to the review process to be mentored by more established members of the editorial board with a view to becoming full members in 2025.

Journal Downloads

In terms of the usage of the journal, we have pleasing progress to report. In 2024, Youth Justice had 19,062 full-text downloads during the year, a 2.3% increase on 2023. The number of downloads increased every month, with the exception of February, indicating a consistent upwards trend in this regard. Among the most popular articles downloaded in 2023 were those from the special issue on Street Gangs, Group Offending and Violence published in 2020.

Impact

Youth Justice continues to hold its own in journal impact, despite increasing competition. In 2022, our impact factor was 1.4, steady from the same factor in 2021 and our ranking in Criminology and Penology has improved from 54/69 in 2021 to 46/69 in 2022. Our most cited articles in 2023 were from those that featured in the Special Issue on Street Gangs, Group Offending and Violence. The Journal Citation Indicator, which measures the citation impact of journals in the Web of Science Core Collection, was 0.6 in 2022, a slight drop from 0.69 in 2021. In this respect, our ranking among Criminology and Penology journals was 63/112, up from 57/109. Our CiteScore by year (calculated as the total citations made in the CiteScore year and the prior 3 years to content published in the CiteScore year and the prior 3 years, divided by the total number of items published by the journal in the CiteScore year and prior 3 years) was 2.4 in 2022, up from 2.2 in 2021 and up significantly from 1.5 in 2020. On Google Scholar, Youth Justice had a h5-Index of 19 in 2022, up from 16 in 2021 (indicating the number of articles over the past 5 years with more than five citations). The h5-Median was 27 in 2022, up from 22 in 2021. As broad indicators of the increasing relevance and use of the journal, these are positive trends. Interesting, alternative metrics such as Altmetric, which tracks mentions of journal articles across online platforms (not necessarily citations) showed some similarity with the most cited and downloaded articles highlighted above, but also included articles on deterrence and sentencing, care experienced girls in the justice system and the criminalisation of children in care.

Readers will be familiar with the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which aims to improve the ways in which scholarly research outputs are evaluated. Our Universities – University College Cork and KU Leuven – have both signed DORA and with Sage, we are committed to promoting its principles in Youth Justice. This includes reducing the emphasis on Impact Factor as a promotional tool and, as this editorial suggests, presenting a variety of metrics for researchers to use to assess a journal’s performance. Finding creative and accessible ways to promote access to the journal is crucial to increasing its scholarly value and practical impact. You may want to receive email alerts for new content by first registering for a personal account on Sage Journals and then adding YJJ (Youth Justice Journal) to your profile. Many articles, including our recent editorial on the Rights of the Child in the Child Justice System (Pleysier and Kilkelly, 2023) and other articles on restorative justice (Marder and Forde, 2023) and on the literacy abilities of young people with language difficulties in the youth justice system (Hopkins and Clegg, 2023), enjoyed click-throughs, via this route in 2023. Those publishing in Youth Justice are encouraged to disseminate their publications via social media tagging @SageJournals.

In conclusion, editing Youth Justice continues to be a demanding but a hugely rewarding responsibility. With this editorial, we have sought to keep you up to date on the performance of the journal and the ways you can get involved in our community as an author or reviewer. We are delighted, with this first issue of 2023 to launch our new feature – International News – which is authored by Professor Ann Skelton, Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Holder of positions at both Leiden University and the University of Pretoria, we could think of no one more eminent to launch our new feature than Professor Skelton and we are grateful to her for taking the time to publish with us in 2024. We are excited about the potential of this feature to broaden our knowledge and debate on international youth justice issues, and we look forward to presenting two new editions of this feature in the remaining volumes of 2024 and beyond.