In This Guide
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.
Use the tabs above to navigate through the following pages of the guide:
- Scholarly articles and Peer Review- learn about the features of a scholarly article and the peer review process
- Evaluating Web Sites - Tips for evaluating information on the web
Related Guides:
Image Credit: Materials-Science-Journals by The Wiley Asia Blog. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
How to Evaluate 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.
Scholarly Checklist--Look for:
- Authors listed, with credentials
- Bibliography, references, or works cited and data (statistics, figures) to support conclusions
- Reviewed by peers or experts in the subject
- Published by a reputable publisher
- Purpose is to impart knowledge, not to sell, persuade, entertain
Authoritative--A source can have authority even if it isn't scholarly.
- Author and/or publisher is an expert on the subject
- Author's affiliations and contact information are available
- Publisher or sponsoring organization is reputable (e.g., for websites, look for the domain; .gov or .edu sites are more likely to contain unbiased information)
- Cites scholarly or high-quality sources in references list/bibliography
Other Criteria-- these are not definitive, but worthy of consideration:
- Do you see errors in spelling, grammar, data?
- Is the publication in turn cited by other credible works published later?
- How current is the information (no date? be suspicious)?
