Research Tip:
Evaluating Your Sources
In college and most professional settings you are expected to pull from high quality sources of information in your work. It's imperative to back up your arguments in your writing with credible sources.
So what makes a source (article, book, website, etc.) credible?
Here are a few criteria to consider when evaluating the credibility of a source.
Author's Credentials
Who is/are the authors? Do they have any authority on the topic they're writing about? Have they written about this topic before? Check if the source lists the university or organization with which the author is affiliated. If the author has a title (MD, PhD, MA, etc.) or works in academia the source is more likely to be credible.
Relevance
It's also important to consider the appropriateness of the source to your topic.
When was the source published? Depending on your topic the age of the source may not matter. However most of the sciences prefer your sources to be recent. An article published 30 years ago may no longer be relevant or credible, even if it was at the time it was published.
You should also consider for who the source was intended. Is the book you're considering published for a juvenile audience? If so, even though the information may be factually correct, it won't be seen as an appropriate source for an academic paper.
Publisher
Take a look at the publication information page of your book. If the publisher name sounds unfamiliar it could be a self-publishing company, meaning the author published it themselves. Such titles have no fact-checking, and no guarantee of expertise on the topic. Perform a quick Google search on the publisher and you'll know for sure.
What journal does the article you're reading appear in? Scholarly journals are one of the best places to conduct research because much of the source evaluation has been done for you. Scholarly journals are where experts in the field publish their findings, and articles are not published without first being peer-reviewed by other experts in the field. Most databases, including all EBSCO databases, have a checkbox to return only articles that are from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.
What type of website hosts the page you're viewing? If the domain has a .edu or .gov extension, it's more likely that your source is credible. Avoid websites that have grammatical errors, broken links or lots of advertisements and pop-ups. Check to see when the webpage was last updated. To be considered credible you should know for sure when the information was published.
