Library Databases
- Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new windowSearch the abstracts of the major journals in criminal justice and criminology. You can add other EBSCO databases, like Academic Search Complete, to your search by selecting "Choose Databases" before you start your search.
- ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowSearch a wide range of social sciences resources including those on criminology and victimology.
- Criminology - Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new windowOxford Bibliographies in Criminology is a much-needed online guide to the essential literature across the various subfields of criminology. It combines the best features of a high-level encyclopedia and a traditional bibliography in a style tailored to meet the needs of today’s online researchers. Each article, written and reviewed by top scholars in the field, is rich with citations and annotations, expert recommendations, and narrative pathways to the most important works for virtually all areas of criminology.
- ProQuest - U.S. Newsstream This link opens in a new windowCurrent U.S. news content going back to the 1980s. It features top newspapers, wires, broadcast transcripts, blogs, and news sites in full-text format. US Newsstream provides key national and regional news sources from the U.S. and includes exclusive and preferred access to top titles, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday, and Chicago Tribune.
- National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts This link opens in a new windowThe National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database contains summaries of more than 150,000 publications on criminal justice, including Federal, state, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished research. Subject areas include corrections, courts, drugs and crime, law enforcement, juvenile justice, crime statistics, and victims of crime.
- Criminal Justice and Public Safety in Video This link opens in a new windowCriminal Justice and Public Safety in Video includes hundreds of hours of video for professionals and students in criminal justice and public safety. Documentaries and interviews provide personal field experiences as well as insight into the function and controversies of the justice system. Students will benefit from invaluable training videos that demonstrate how to respond to potentially-dangerous situations, all from the safety of the classroom.
- Mass Incarceration and Prison Studies This link opens in a new windowThis curated video database provides a rare breadth of study for students to investigate both crucial global trends in mass incarceration, and the detailed prison infrastructure of specific countries. Mass Incarceration and Prison Studies is organized around a selection of key historical and contemporary events and themes, bringing together archival and reference materials, court cases, first-hand accounts, videos, Supreme Court audio files, research on rehabilitation, training materials and artistic works.
LionSearch
- LionSearch This link opens in a new windowan integrated search of books, e-books, research articles, newspaper articles, and other publications.
If you are beginning your research and are unsure of where to find information, you may want to start with LionSearch, available on the University Libraries homepage. A capture of the LionSearch box is displayed below.
Type in your keywords and LionSearch will help you find books and articles available through the Libraries on your topic. You can also use the resources you find as starting points for new keywords and journals for further research.
Google Scholar
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowFind a wide variety of scholarly resources on the web. If the article is available from Penn State, a link will appear on the right hand side of the page. To search Google Scholar with Penn State holdings from off-campus, navigate to Settings > Library Links and add Penn State to your list.
Journals of Interest
You can access the journals below directly through these links. To access other journals, use the library website to browse or search the full list of journals by title from the main page.
- CriminologyThis is a peer-reviewed publication of the American Society of Criminology and is considered a top journal in the field.
- Criminology and Criminal JusticeA peer-reviewed journal focusing on a broad range of topics in criminal justice and criminology including policing and other issues.
- Justice QuarterlyA peer-reviewed publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Articles focus on a broad range of criminal justice topics, including policing issues.
- Journal of Criminal JusticeA peer-reviewed journal focusing on theory and practice in the criminal justice field.
- Policing and SocietyA peer-reviewed journal focused on policing and police institutions.
Is this journal peer reviewed?
Journals will outline the extent of their review processes. You can find this information on the journal's website, usually on a page titled something like "About this Journal," "Information for Authors," or "How to Submit." The page will describe how authors should submit their articles and the journal's process for handling submissions. If you find information about peer review, sending the article to reviewers, or if the journal requires the author to submit names of potential reviewers, then the journal has a peer review process. If the journal editor is the only one who reviews articles, then it is not considered a peer reviewed journal.
Also note that some journals may contain a mix of peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed (often termed, "editor reviewed") articles. So make sure to closely read the information about review processes on the journal website.