Introduction
All sources are not equal and the choice and quality of the sources you select to include in your research paper are as important as your grammar and organization. Therefore, it is always necessary to use your judgment or critical thinking skills to evaluate the information you are gathering during the research process. This is especially important when using material from the internet. When deciding whether a source is credible or not, you must first decide what you need, what type of source you need, and then apply a guideline on how you are going to evaluate whether the source can be used for your research.
How will you to determine whether a book, website, article or other source is sufficient for academic research for your college-level assignment?
This module will guide you through that evaluation process.
All sources are not equal and the choice and quality of the sources you select to include in your research paper are as important as your grammar and organization. Therefore, it is always necessary to use your judgment or critical thinking skills to evaluate the information you are gathering during the research process. This is especially important when using material from the internet.
Books, magazines and other materials available in the library or from digital resources provided by the St Johns River State College Library have been chosen and purchased by academic librarians who are information professionals. The evaluation process has been done for you. Using the Library digital resources assures that the evaluative process has been done. Our collection of resources has been through the publication process where they are reviewed by editors and fact-checkers before they are published.
When selecting a resource on your own, it is especially important use a set of guidelines or questions about your source to guide your evaluative process.
Please note: There are no such standards for publication on the Web. With a minimum of knowledge and equipment literally anyone can publish anything on the Web.
There are, however, a number of strategies that can be employed to make sure you collect only reliable, quality material for inclusion in your paper.
If you are looking for Web sites to use as sources for an academic paper, it is a good idea to begin with sites that have been recommended by your Library, instructor or other skilled professionals. There are many digital resources that can link you to Web resources that have been pre-selected by professionals that are skilled in information evaluation. It is crucial, however, that you develop the ability to evaluate sources on your own; so let's go over some guidelines.
Long before the Internet, standards for evaluating the reliability of information were developed. The traditional standards can be adapted to any resource, including online resources:
These standards should be used by the researcher only as a guide to the reliability of the information presented. A "No" answer to a single criterion does not automatically render the information unreliable. Used in an overall context, however, these criteria can be good indicators of quality sources.