Mapping research in relation to research interest is a common act of performing a research review. This kind of activity is an important part of being a researcher both to portray the competence of knowing a field and to frame specific research theoretically and analytically. The act of showing belongingness and relationship to different paradigms and thinkers (Kuhn, 1962) or various epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) has over time been given different forms within the community of research. In relation to the act of framing research by different systematic research strategies we raise questions on: who inhabits and cultivates the field of curriculum research according to different strategies for scientific communication? Our theoretical framework is based on an argument that acknowledge the importance of investigating scientific reasoning (Hacking, 1992) and epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) for understanding the intellectual organizing of knowledge, and by that exemplify how scientific ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ are constructed and legitimized, which is knowledge perceived as ‘common sense’ (cf. Gramsci 1992) within different scientific fields.

We investigate four common systematic research strategies for performing research reviews, most used and reproduced within the community of researchers. We have first the handbooks where experts of a specific field are given the legitimacy to portray a specific field of research; second, the systematic search strategies performed with the help of various databases such as e.g. Web of Science, Scopus or ERIC; third, the investigating act of systematically browsing through research journals of special interest within a specific field, and fourth, the systematic research reviews performed by special institutes set up for performing these tasks, such as e.g. Danish Clearinghouse or EPPI centre, which in turn are used as a source by some researchers for illustrating the findings of more restricted and specific research questions.

Focusing on four different forms of performing systematic research reviews we describe, analyze and compare the various forms with regards to:

• how knowledge of/in a research field is constructed,
• what kind of research that is selected and privileged

 In particular, we are interested in the potential movement of research reviews from an act of collective ‘intellectualizing’ among ‘experts’ to an act of ‘technologizing’ dependent on algorithms and terminology embedded in various databases, in which the amount of data is more important in ‘evidence-making’ than the perceived expertise of the source. To put it differently, the databases with their vast aggregation of data, organized by algorithms and terminology, are perceived as the authority and not the authors or the epistemic cultures in which the authors are embedded.

We use the field of curriculum research to elaborate on the different forms of research reviews and their consequences for knowledge produced. Within the field of curriculum research, handbooks have had a dominant position in describing the field. Also, explicit research reviews within different journals have been important among researchers in the framing of the field of curriculum. However, in the contemporary, bibliometric analyses grounded in database searches and systematic research review performed by special institutes are more and more employed. 

Gramsci, A. (1992) Prison Notebook. G. Lawrence & Wishart: London. Hacking, I. (1992). 'Style' of historians and philosophers. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 23(1), 1-20. Knorr Cetina, K. (1999) Epistemic Cultures: How the Science Make Knowledge. Harvard University Press. Kuhn, T (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press