Understanding the Basic Parts of the Scientific Literature of Crime
Part 1 of Using the Scientific Literature of Crime
Anyone who seeks to explain crime scientifically needs to be able to navigate the academic literature devoted to the scientific study of crime.
To navigate the academic literature, you need to solve two problems: knowledge and access.
Today’s post, the first of a seven-part series, focuses on understanding the basic parts of the scientific literature (knowledge). The next part in the series will address how to actually get your hands on research itself (access).
Of this newsletter’s three primary audiences (academics, journalists, and advocates), this series is written for journalists and advocates whose backgrounds may not have prepared them to use the scientific literature as effectively as they might like.
Academics and others with an academic background will probably find the current post, if not the series itself, too basic. Nonetheless, future installments might interest you.
You’re reading the first article of a seven-part series:
Understanding the basic parts of the scientific literature of crime
Accessing the scientific literature of crime
Crafting a research question
Searching the literature
Selecting journal articles like a science journalist
Reading a journal article like a grad student
Monitoring new research like me
This article was published free, but the rest of the series will be available exclusively to paid subscribers.
The current article focuses on three things.
First, we’ll look at the cycle that drives science and, in turn, the scientific literature, including the disciplines most relevant to us: criminology and criminal justice.
Second, we’ll review important considerations
Finally, we’ll look at the basic parts of the scientific literature.
The scientific method
Criminology and criminal justice are disciplines that strive to follow the scientific method, which is an approach to acquiring knowledge that differentiates science from other methods.
The scientific method:
…is an iterative cycle, not a straight line.
…is intended to be self-correcting. That is, it’s supposed to find mistakes and correct them, so that if we misunderstand something today, we understand it better tomorrow.
…is often depicted as a circle where one step follows another, but the sequence isn’t necessarily set. Developments at one stage may send you back to a previous stage.
Having said all that, here is one depiction of the basic stages of the scientific method:
As Wikipedia, the source of this image, states: “there are many others.”
This image sums up what academics do when they do scientific research, though the actual execution varies greatly.
The output of the scientific method is the scientific literature.
Important considerations
Before discussing parts of the scientific literature, there are a number of considerations that I think are important to keep in mind. We need to remember:
Good researchers will discuss possible sources of error, the limitations of their study, and how much their findings can be generalized to other situations and contexts.
We shouldn’t view assertions made in journal articles as unassailable facts, but as claims.
Any claims made in research articles are provisional and subject to future revision, elaboration, or even retraction.
Future revision and elaboration usually happens in new research articles examining the same topic, often by the same researchers trying to expand on their previous work.
As a result of items 3 and 4, keeping up with the literature is important so that we don’t use research claims that have been disproven since we last reviewed the literature.
As we review the literature, we also need to follow claims through time. More on this in future installments in this series.
The basic parts of scientific literature
The basic parts of scientific literature:
Abstracts summarize the purpose, methods, and (usually) key findings of journal articles. They’re usually a single paragraph found at the beginning of a research article. Abstracts are freely available even when an article is only available to those with subscriptions to a journal (see access models).
Academic journals are publications devoted to publishing research articles, essays, book reviews, and other scholarly work. Some are broadly focused, covering entire scientific disciplines, such as Criminology or the Journal of Criminal Justice. Others are more specialized, such as Homicide Studies or Violence Against Women. For some other relevant journals, see Google Scholar’s top publications in Criminology, Criminal Law & Policy list.
Academic publishers are companies that publish academic journals and books. Prominent academic publishers on Google’s Criminology, Criminal Law & Policy list include Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE.
Access models describe research availability. “Open” access journals or journal articles are freely available to read without special subscriptions. “Restricted” access journals or journal articles cannot be read without special subscriptions. However, research authors are allowed to provide articles if asked.
Journal articles are the basic units of academic knowledge. They present the findings of research done by academics and typically follow the IMRAD framework (introduction, methods, results, analysis, discussion), whether those are the actual headings in an article or not. (Note how the IMRAD structure of most research journal articles maps on top of the scientific method described above. Introductions often include relevant observations, the research question, and hypotheses. The methods and results sections cover the “experiment”. Analysis is pretty self-explanatory. Discussion includes the conclusions. The article itself is a method of reporting those conclusions. Another example is presenting the research at a conference.)
“The literature” is a phrase you’ll hear a lot as you read research and talk to academics. It refers to the body of scientific work that’s been published in peer-reviewed journals on a specific topic.
Peer review is the process that a journal article must go through to be published in most scholarly journals. As Wiley, a leading academic publisher, puts it, peer review’s “ultimate purpose is to maintain the integrity of science by filtering out invalid or poor quality articles.” In this process, multiple scholars in the same field (peers) review an article. In many review processes, the reviewers are unknown to the authors. In some, reviewers and authors don’t know each other’s identities. While not without its critics, peer review is the most widely accepted means of screening scientific articles prior to publication.
My intent with the current article was to introduce you to the basics of the scientific literature and I hope that even if you weren’t familiar with these ideas or terms before, you’re now interested in getting your hands on some crime research. If you haven’t already, check out Your First Five.
Next time: Accessing the Scientific Literature of Crime.