Seminar in Natural Science (online)

Finding Sources:  Choices and Challenges (Part III)

The evaluation of print and web sources is a huge subject, and we could easily spend several weeks discussing it.  However, we need to limit ourselves to a brief exploration here, with the understanding that this material is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  

First, a bit about Alexander and Tate's evaluation criteria.  When using this series of questions with a web source, the key thing to remember is that you're trying to determine the quality of the source (how good is the information?) as well as its credibility (how much can I trust the information?).  The better answers you supply for each of the following criteria with respect to a given web source, the greater the quality and credibility of that source.  Secondly, be aware that the questions under each of A and T's criteria are not necessarily the final word:  you may think of additional questions to ask of each category, some of which may be prompted by the nature of the source itself.  

But what about other kinds of sources, including books, professional journal articles, news and popular magazine sources, reference works, government documents, etc.?  These are probably even more important than web sources, given the vast amounts of information available in print and the higher levels of quality control (not always, but generally) that surround the production of print sources compared to that of web sources (often there's no editing or quality control for websites beyond what the author provides).  It's important to analyze that information, too, in order to assess the quality, credibility, and usefulness of a given source for your research.

A few thumbnail guidelines in this regard:  

• Peer-reviewed sources are better than non-peer-reviewed.  
• University Presses are good sources of scholarly books and even journals.  These books tend to be more scholarly in nature than those you'll find offered by trade publishers.
• Scholarly and professional journals are excellent sources of original, peer-reviewed research reports.  

For some critical questions to apply to sources you find in the course of your research, check out this brief list of questions from Purdue's Online Writing Lab.  Remember that you should also evaluate a source as you read it, before you use it in a research paper.

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Last updated 02/05/10