Bibliometric analysis of Psychology journals related to the Forensic-Juridical field, taking into account the WoS and JCR (2018)

Abstract

The quality criteria used by scientific journals, the most current topics and the most relevant authors are of great interest to researchers in different fields. The main objective of this study is to provide updated information from forensic-legal journals related to psychology, according to the following indicators: a) Journal Citation Reports (JCR) with the latest available information from 2018, and b) bibliometric analysis and content (from 2014 to 2018) of the articles of the journals under study indexed in Web of Science (WoS). The 19 journals were analyzed in the categories of Criminology & Penology and Law in JCR, related to Psychology. We included a total of 5,289 articles. The journal with the highest Impact Factor is The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context (3.682). In addition, it is remarkable that the Impact Factor of the analyzed journals has increased in the 50% of them, compared to the JCR of 2017. A wide frequency of use of terms related to "crimes" and "aggressions" is observed in articles published in the last five years. It is important to continue promoting the development of quality journals for Legal and Forensic Psychology.