Criminology

What is a peer-reviewed journal?

Peer-reviewed journals are often called scholarly or academic journals. They are different from popular magazines. Articles in peer-reviewed journals:

• are written by experts for other experts
• usually report on research
• always include many in-text citations and a list of references or works cited by the author(s)
• have been rigorously critiqued and reviewed by experts for quality before being published. This is called peer-review.

This one-page checklist compares scholarly journals with popular and trade magazines in Criminology:

Example of a peer-reviewed, primary research article:

APA-formatted citation for this article:

How I found this article:

I found this article by searching in the research database called Criminal Justice Abstracts using this combination of search keywords:

(youth OR young OR juvenile OR adolescen*) AND crim* AND Canad*

Youth Criminal Justice Act (2003 - )

Young Offenders Act (1984-2003)

Juvenile Delinquents Act (1908-1984)

If you have not found anything useful in the Library's databases, you may want to check Google Scholar.

Google Scholar lists articles from a wide variety of scholarly journals. It also includes references to book chapters and many other types of sources.

How do I find the full text for an article I found in Google Scholar?

Google Scholar does not usually provide the full-text for articles for free, so you might get prompted to pay for access to an article. 

Do not pay for articles! It's quite likely that the KPU Library subscribes to the journal. If we don't, we can get it for you free of charge.

• If you are on-campus, look for the "Full text at KPU" link in your results.
• If you're off-campus, customize the Google Scholar settings to check the KPU Library for full-text. Choose 'Library Links' and then type in Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
• If the KPU Library does not have the journal article that you need, you can request a copy from another library through interlibrary loan at no charge. We do the searching and can deliver most articles to you via email within 2 business days.

Where can I get this article?

If you are searching in a KPU library database:

• You will often see a link directly to the full-text of the article; look for a PDF icon, or a link that says "full-text"
• If you do not see this, click on the link that says "Where can I get this?". This will often link you to the full article in another database available through KPU Library.
• If KPU Library does not subscribe to this journal, you will be given the option to request the article AT NO CHARGE through the interlibrary loan request link. We do the searching and can deliver most articles to you via email within 2 business days.

If you have a citation for a specific article:

Look up the journal title here to find out if it's available through KPU Library:

Important:

This search will ONLY tell you whether Kwantlen users have access to a specific journal title, and link you to a list of available issues.

This tool will NOT search for individual articles on a specific topic in these journals. For that, you need to use a Research Database. (Try the recommended databases in the first tab of this box first.)

If KPU Library does not have the journal article:

You can request a copy from another library  using our interlibrary loan service at no charge. We do the searching and can deliver most articles to you via email within 2 business days.

Reports - provide data summaries, tables and charts, with expert analysis on trends

Static Tables - present data in table form, but you cannot change the table

Interactive tools - allow you to filter the data in many ways

Citation for a print-format book:

Citation for a book chapter in a print-format book:

Notes:

• The authors of the CHAPTER are listed first, followed by the title of the chapter.
• For the editors of the BOOK, their initials come before their surnames, which is the opposite of the order for the chapter authors.

Citation for an e-book:

Example of APA citation for government report made available through the Canadian Public Documents Collection (CPDC) database provided through the Canadian Electronic Library on the desLibris platform. Note: this e-book is also a government report:

Note: desLibris's CPDC database is simply providing a different route to access a government report that is also freely-available online, Most people won't have access to this database. So, I would highly recommend looking up the original online publication on the government website and citing it directly. Here is what that citation would look like:

Note: I found the report's catalogue number when I searched for the title of the report using Google. The first Google search result took me to the Publications Canada catalogue which provided extra descriptive information, plus a permanent link to the PDF.

Citation for a CHAPTER in an e-book:

Notes:

• The authors of the CHAPTER are listed first, followed by the title of the chapter.
• For the editors of the BOOK, their initials come before their surnames, which is the opposite of the order for the chapter authors.

Example of a government agency report with no individual author(s) named:

Example of a government agency report with individual author(s) named:

Note:  the name of the website is included, in addition to the URL, because it provides helpful information to the reader about which government agency produced the report

For more examples, see the KPU Library's APA Guide, especially the section on Reports. The SFU Library also has a fairly detailed guide on Citing Canadian Government Documents in APA Style.

Example of APA citation for report with named individual authors:

Notes:

• "National Youth Homelessness Survey" is capitalized in the subtitle of this report because it is the NAME of a survey. Names are capitalized in APA style.
• The name of the website is included, in addition to the URL, because it provides helpful information to the reader about the source of this information (i.e. which organization produced the report) that you would not know from the rest of the citation

Examples of APA citation for report without named individual authors:

Notes:

• "Street Youth Legal Service" is capitalized because it is the NAME of a program. Names are capitalized in APA style.
• The name of the website is not added to the URL, because it is the organization is already listed as an author 

Note: if there is no individual author credited on the report, list the issuing organization as the author

Article from Juristat

Note: Juristat is an unusual journal. Most journals publish a fixed number of issues each year (with separate issue numbers), and each issue contains several articles. Juristat publishes individual articles, one at a time, online. Every article in a given year has the same volume and issue number. When you cite Juristat, you can treat it either like a journal or like a government report, because it is both. I prefer to cite it as a government report.

• note that Juristat is treated as a series title here. It's listed after the title of the report, and not in italics.
• most government reports have catalogue or other identifying numbers; include these in your citation

• If you choose to cite this as an article from a journal, you will have to look on this website to find the volume number because it is not listed on the article itself

Customized data table from Statistics Canada

Notes

• Since we don’t know exactly when the data was posted on the Statcan website, we indicate that there is “no date” of publication (n.d.),
• Because we created this unique table, we need to tell our reader what the table includes. We do that by adding a descriptive subtitle. We put this subtitle in square brackets because it does not appear on the table itself. It includes:
  • the content that is included in the table:
    • the violations (murder, first degree), and
    • statistical measures (actual incidents and rate per 100,000 population)
  • the geographic region included in the table (Canada and British Columbia)
  • the time period covered by our customized table (2013-2017)
• Notice that you need to indicate that this is a customized table by saying that you “adapted” the data. You also note the date you created the table because it’s from a dynamic database which could change by the time your reader checks the website.