Journal articles are the archival backbone of cumulative social-science knowledge

Evidence

Journal articles offer a window into the inner workings of social psychology. They document how social psychologists formulate hypotheses, design empirical studies, analyze the observations they collect, and interpret their results. Journal articles also serve an invaluable archival function: They contain the full store of common and cumulative knowledge of social psychology. Having documentation of past research allows researchers to build on past findings and advance our understanding of social behavior, without pursuing avenues of investigation that have already been explored. Perhaps most importantly, a research study is never complete until its results have been shared with others, colleagues and students alike. Journal articles are a primary means of communicating research findings. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4546

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Edited anthologies emerged to solve undergraduate access to primary social psychology research — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 1