This guide lists resources used in a library research workshop by Caja Blomley for students in CRIM 3111 (Contemporary Sociological Criminology) taught by Mark Vardy in summer 2024.
Guide created by Chris Burns, Criminology Liaison Librarian
This library workshop is designed to support your work on the class project. Our main focus will be on learning how to use citation trails to track a "scholarly conversation" and how to create a citation map. The workshop will be roughly 2 hours with a group activity. There will be a 15-minute break in the middle of the workshop.
Class project component |
Library workshop + other support |
1. Research question |
We won't go into how to develop a research question in this workshop. You have probably learned this in other courses. The pre-workshop tutorial on How to Choose an Appropriate Topic was designed to refresh your memory. If you'd like to learn more about this important skill, please see:
You may find it especially helpful to look at these scholarly encyclopedias about criminological theories to get a broad understanding of the history of major sociological theories, ideas for narrowing your topic, and references to important sources: |
2. Annotated bibliography in APA Style
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We won't be discussing how to write an annotated bibliography, but you will find links to some useful sources about annotated bibliographies on this guide, though. For in-person help, please consider booking an appointment at the Learning Centre. We are assuming that you already know how to identify peer-reviewed journal articles and use APA Style. The pre-workshop tutorial What are Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journal Articles? was designed to refresh your memory. We'll also do a quick check at the start of the workshop. You will find some help with citing scholarly journal articles and book chapters in APA style on this guide. We will be looking at several tools that let you locate peer-reviewed journal articles and scholarly book chapters which also let you filter or sort your search results by publication date. |
3. Citation map
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Citation mapping is the focus of our workshop today. We hope you will learn:
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Before the workshop, you will have completed these two 15-minute tutorials to refresh your understanding:
"Citation mapping" goes by many names*, but they all refer to the process of tracing who has cited whom. Citation maps create a snapshot of a scholarly conversation.
Image created using Wordcloud.com
*Other terms include 360-degree searching and bibliographic analysis.
The University of Prince Edward Island's Library provides this list of reasons you might want to create a citation map:
To create a citation map, start with one relevant book or article and then trace which sources its authors used (cited references) and who else has subsequently used their work (citing references). Another way to think about a citation map is like a tree. You start with a "seed" and then trace the roots and branches.
You're starting at a specific point in the "scholarly conversation", and then learning about where it started and where it has gone.
We will use this seed article to get started:
Fraser, A., & Hagedorn, J. M. (2018). Gangs and a global sociological imagination. Theoretical Criminology, 22(1), 42–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480616659129
The publisher's website says that this article was "first published online August 4, 2016", but that is NOT the official publication date that you would use to cite it. When you click on the "cite article" option you will see that the official publication date is 2018, in volume 22, issue 1.
Articles are usually published on the journal’s website long before they are officially published in the print journal. Always use the official publication date, if available. If an article has not yet been officially published (and assigned its volume, issue, and page numbers), use the APA citation format for an “advance online publication” based on the online publication date.
Many databases include tools to help you more quickly view the sources that a seed article has cited. We'll use Summon -- the library's all-in-one search tool -- to demonstrate this.
Open this Summon link for the Fraser & Hagedorn (2018) seed article in a new tab or window: https://go.exlibris.link/qG20hrlM
More info on Summon's Citation Trail feature.
Now we want to know if other authors have continued this scholarly conversation and have cited the Fraser & Hagedorn (2018) article in their reference lists. We're going to use Summon again with the same seed article to demonstrate this.
Open this Summon link for the Fraser & Hagedorn (2018) seed article in a new tab or window: https://go.exlibris.link/qG20hrlM
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See if you can find the exact class reading in Summon. If you do, then look for the "Cites" and/or "Cited by" links to start you on the citation trail.
Warning: This usually works better for journal articles than for books.
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So far, we have used Summon -- the library's "all-in-one" discovery tool -- to explore cited and citing references.
Many library databases have built-in tools to help you find citing articles. Other non-library tools can also be useful. These tools may use different terms (e.g "Cited by" or "Citing" or "Times cited in this database") and the functions may be a bit hidden, but it's worth looking for them.
The University of Prince Edward Island Library has a very handy guide to Cited Reference Searching which lists the features of many different tools. Click on the drop-down options below to learn more about a few library tools. We've included publishers' websites here because you usually need a subscription to use the advanced features.
We''ll look at some free tools on the next tab. for "Open Access Tools".
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In this example, document b cites document d, and is cited by document a.
Vector version of Image:Tred-G.png [Citation graph]. (2007). Wikimedia Commons. [Public domain]
Swoger, B. (2014, February 17). Citation chain diagram. figshare.
Figure 3 in Fort, D., Herr, T., Shaw., P., Gutzman, K., & Starren, J. (2017). Mapping the evolving definitions of translational research. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 1, 1-7. [CC-BY-NC-SA]
Citing your sources properly shows that you have done your research and consulted appropriate sources for your topic. It also acknowledges that all research builds on work that has come before. You are giving credit to sources that have influenced or informed your work. If you do not do this, you are essentially stealing another person's ideas, which is called plagiarism.
Whenever you use another person's ideas (even if you put this into your own words), you must give them credit. You do this by CITING the source you used in two places:
Incorrect
David, J.-D., & Mitchell, M. (2021). Contacts with the Police and the Over-Representation of Indigenous Peoples in The Canadian Criminal Justice System. Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 63(2), 23–45. https://doi-org.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/10.3138/cjccj.2020-0004
Correct
David, J.-D., & Mitchell, M. (2021). Contacts with the police and the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian criminal justice system. Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 63(2), 23–45. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2020-0004
Notes:
Most library research databases have built-in citation generators. These are handy tools to create a rough citation, but you ALWAYS need to double-check them. Here is an example from Summon:
Incorrect
David, J.-D., & Mitchell, M. (2021). Contacts with the Police and the Over-Representation of Indigenous Peoples in The Canadian Criminal Justice System. Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 63(2), 23–45. https://doi-org.ezproxy.kpu.ca:2443/10.3138/cjccj.2020-0004
Correct
David, J.-D., & Mitchell, M. (2021). Contacts with the police and the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian criminal justice system. Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 63(2), 23–45. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2020-0004
