How can you tell if you've found high-quality, accurate books, articles and web sites to use in your research? Use this guide to evaluate everything from scholarly articles to websites.
This Guide Contains:
Related Guides
Image Credit: Materials-Science-Journals by The Wiley Asia Blog. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Evaluating Sources
What kind of information do you need? If you are writing for a class assignment, you may be required to use peer-reviewed ("refereed") or scholarly sources. In any case, you should always look for sources that are authoritative. For more detailed help with evaluating your sources, see our Evaluating Information Guide.
Scholarly Checklist--Look for:
Authoritative--A source can have authority even if it isn't scholarly.
Other Criteria-- these are not definitive, but worthy of consideration: