Research and peer review in academic journals

¶ … matrices for human trafficking. They observe that although in recent years great progress has been made towards understanding and of the problem and combating it, little development has been made in effectuating measures that can specifically delineate it and in developing effective ways to collect the data. This results in contradictory information on the subject and on few studies being based on extensive research.

It was only fairly recently that a joint decision was made on how to define "human trafficking." Nonetheless, there are so many variables and divergences within the phenomenon that difficulty still exists in international agreement in defining the term.

The authors state that efforts against trafficking will only improve when all countries have a unanimous standardized system of measures with which they can track the problem and when all countries begin to enact and implement the necessary anti-trafficking legislation. The latter depends on help from the former.

Laczko and Gramegna (2005) argue that steps that should be taken to address the current shortage of data o the subject include:

1. Raising awareness about the need for better data

2. Ensuring that the project of collecting data is given priority and that resources are given to poorer countries to help them compiler better data

3. Promoting a better use of existing statistics though national and local organizations

4. Encouraging the agencies that combat trafficking to develop data systems and to collect data

5. Constant and ongoing research in order to collect as much data as possible on the problem and possible ways to combat it.

I find the authors' research to be objective since even though they are passionate about their subject -- and this is a good thing btu needs to be monitored (Neumann, 2006) -- they are also patently knowledgeable about it, quoting an admirable immensity of authoritative sources to support their research. Whilst this indicates their breadth of scholarliness on the subject, it still may not indicate their objectivity. Nonetheless, rather than engaging in accusations and recrimination against the lack of measures, they explain the difficulty of adequately measuring such as an intractably complex and huge subject where " the range of actions and outcomes covered by the term" are vast. Commiserating with the challenge, they nonetheless delineate the need for adequate measures to be constructed. Objectivity is also seen later on (e.g. p.186) where they indicate shortfalls in various indicators of human trafficking due to contradictory or insufficient knowledge on the subject.

That the authors are authorities on their subject is evident from the vast amount of resources that they cite ranging from all the minute organizations, in particular countries that are involved with drafting legislation on the subject to their intricate knowledge about the minutia of the various relevant databases such as the IOM Counter-Trafficking Module Database and its specific countries as well as variables that it deals with. Their sources initiate from highly respected, current journals -- all scientific and all peer-reviewed. Their work, too, is published in an acceptable journal: The Brown Journal of World Affairs.

Their research too is current as we see from perusing the brunt of citations included in the article; most are from recent years, and from their Tables that show the most recent information on the topic. This is as it should be (in most cases dealing with empirical research), since situations change and we want to be assured that we are receiving the most current and accurate information on the topic.

Accuracy seems to be guaranteed by the extensive amount of research that has gone into the article; by the authors perusing a diversity of perspectives; by them attempting to understanding reasons for the lack of matrices; and by their minute and cited details in the body of their article. They are certainly not conformists as per the students in Jazvac-Martek (2009) description. Coverage is extensive too ranging from investigating the need to develop better indicators of human trafficking to the wide range of incompatible sources of data that deal with the topic (and focusing on the IOM in particular).