Pioneer of open science

Scott Jacques receives MPI-CSL Open Criminology Award

September 17, 2026

Scott Jacques, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Georgia State University and founder of the open access hub CrimRxi, has been awarded the MPI-CSL Open Criminology Award for Established Researchers.

A collage consisting of a photo of Scott Jacques and the logos of the Max Planck Society, the European Society of Criminology, and CrimRxiv.

Jacques founded the global open-access repository CrimRxi in the field of criminology in 2020. As he describes it, CrimRxiv is “a place to share, discover, and engage with open criminology research from around the world.” The platform brings together publications, preprints, teaching materials, datasets, and other research outputs in one place. CrimRxiv has shared more than 4,200 publications and attracted over 720,000 views from 228 countries and territories.

Scott Jacques also established the CrimConsortium, a network of research organisations committed to making their scholarship openly available through CrimRxiv. The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law has been on board from the very beginning.

Scott Jacques’ mission is to foster the transparency and accessibility of no-cost educational materials and open-access scientific outputs. “I’m here to advance the quality and quantity of open criminology and to mitigate crime and improve control – especially in the digital world,” he says.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Scott Jacques on this distinction and look forward to continuing our collaboration.

The MPI-CSL Open Criminology Award is presented annually by the European Network for Open Criminology (ENOC) and sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (MPI-CSL). It recognizes outstanding contributions to Open Research practices in criminology.