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    Evaluating Sources: Evaluating Academic Sources

    Popular vs. scholarly sources

    Evaluating Academic, Scholarly, and News Sources

    Evaluating Digital Sources Tutorial

    When Do You Not Need to Evaluate a Source? Primary vs. Secondary Sources

    Primary sources are original information.

    • This can be historical items like letters, a piece of legislation, creative writing like poems or novels, interviews, data from a scientific study, or government statistics.
    • Primary sources are used as the raw material you will analyze in your assignment. You don't need to evaluate them beforehand. 

    Secondary sources are based on primary sources.

    • They analyze, summarize, or critique primary sources.
    • Secondary sources provide authoritative support for your arguments. You should evaluate them.

    Examples:

    • Sources Used as Real-life Examples of a Technique:
    You are writing about marketing strategies. You visit the social media accounts of a popular brand. Since you got the links from their website, you know these are the official accounts. You don't need to evaluate this source before using it as an example. 
    • Primary Sources Used For History, Biography, or Case Study:
    Your assignment is to write about a leader who uses the servant leadership model. You find a video of a corporate executive talking about their use of servant leadership in a TED Talk. You may be thinking "my professor said I couldn't use social media or videos". Some sources—like social media—aren't great as secondary sources , but are useful as primary sources. In this case, a video of a talk is a valuable firsthand account of how this leader applies servant leadership.
    • Secondary Sources Used as Primary Sources:
    If you were writing a history paper, newspapers and other sources from the historical event would be primary sources. Books and articles written about the event afterwards would be secondary sources, and you should make sure they are accurate, authoritative sources before using them.
    If, however, you were writing about how a historical event or era has been portrayed in history over time, those same books and articles become primary sources. You would discuss their faults or virtues in your assignment.

    Evaluating Sources to Use for Your Assignments

    The SIFT method is one way to avoid untrustworthy sources. Sources for coursework should be identifiable, current, and authoritative, so evaluating them can be even simpler--the identity and date of the source can be all you need. 

    Step One: What is This Source?

    Before you evaluate, identify!

    • What is it? Is this a website, an article, a book?
      • The web contains a vast number of different types of sources. 
      • Different kinds of sources are appropriate for different kinds of assignments.
        • Scholarly or academic sources can be found on the web, but you will need to identify them yourself. 
        • Library databases identify source types for you.
    • Who is it from? Where did it come from? 
      • Identify the author or creator and publisher or host.
      • Unsigned corporate writing—content without a personal name on official websites—is not the same as anonymous. Instead treat it as the voice of the organization, company, or agency.
      • Know who they are. Use other sources such as news, Wikipedia, or Google to verify if you are unsure.
        • Verify the URL as part of identifying official sources. 
      • Know their reputation. Again, use outside sources to check, don't just take a site's word for it.  
        • The reputation of the author and the publisher both matter. 
      • Know their point of view or biases.
    • Can't figure out the identity of your source? Stop.
      • Ask the Library or your instructor for help.
      • Find a better source.

    Visit Web Search Tips for examples on how to identify online sources.

     Step Two: Time

    How current is it?

    • The web is 25+ years old. Look out for old things left up.
    • The Library databases have sources going back 100+ years. 
    •  Always look at and consider the dates of your sources. 
    • While some fields, such as theology and history, use sources for a long time, most change quickly enough that older information may not be accurate. 
      • For information that needs to be current, aim for around five years or less to start.
      • Older articles may be especially important for the history of a topic, to trace how a topic developed, or to look at a groundbreaking work.
        • For example, Dorothea Orem's writings about her self-care nursing theory are still frequently cited today, even though the original articles are from the 1960s, because the model is still in use.
      • Using very old sources should be intentional, not accidental.

    Undated Websites:

    • Is this the current official site of an organization, company, institution, or agency? 
      • If so pages may not have specific dates, just a general copyright range. 
      • Just ensure that it is still being updated.

    Step Three: Digging Deeper on Authority & Reliability

      After you've found a source, identified who and where it comes from, and checked the dates, you may need to consider a few more things. Many sources won't need step three--you'll know what you need to know just from identifying it. 

      Example:

      You want to include specific numbers about how many people in the United States have different levels of education. You find many websites talking about these statistics. One is "Educational Attainment in the United States: 2020" from census.gov. 

      You identify:

      • This is the official Census Bureau website, as it is a .gov and other sites ID it as the official site.
      • The Census Bureau is the government agency that tracks this information, and other websites cite or link to them for this information. 

      That's all the evaluation needed for this information source.  

      Authority: Credentials & Bias

      What are the credentials of the author or creators?

      • Are they a known author in this subject?
      • Do they have the proper credentials, are they in a field related to the content?
        • A respected economist is no more authoritative on hospital procedures than anyone else outside the health care field. 
      • Sources meant to persuade or advocate may not present all sides accurately. 
      • Balance sources about controversial issues across multiple sources from different points of view.

      Reliability: Accuracy & Verifiability 

      How verifiable is this source?

      • Academic sources will tell you where their information comes from through citations.
      • News writing and official sources should also be clear about where their information comes from.
      • Not all publishers are reputable.
        • Predatory journals are those that publish articles for pay, without holding them to standards of quality or peer review. 
        • Vanity presses publish books for anyone who pays them, without any standards of quality.
        • Some newspapers and magazines publish gossip and rumors. 
      • Preprint articles have not been accepted by a journal, so they won't have a journal name with them. There may be serious issues with the article found in review. These articles are easily found online on preprint servers such as arXiv or MedRxiv.
        • Preprints are for readers with strong knowledge in the subject. Others won't have the background to spot problems. 

      Open Access Journal Articles

      Consider this article:  Beyond Reference Data: A Qualitative Analysis of Nursing Library Chats to Improve Research Health Science Services

      1. What can we notice at the top?

      the header says evidence based library and information practice and about the journal and a issue and volume number

      • A journal title and that it is a journal.
      • A volume and issue number.

      2. Also on the page is a DOI, the unique id number given to most academic articles. 

      DOI:  https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip29828

      3. The journal has an "about" box to the side:

      "EBLIP is a peer reviewed, open access journal published quarterly by the University of Alberta Library. EBLIP publishes original research and commentary on the topic of evidence based library and information practice, as well as reviews of previously published research (evidence summaries) on a wide number of topics."

      4. The address matches that claim:

      https://journals.library. ualberta.ca/eblip/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/29883

      Ualberta.ca goes to the University of Alberta's homepage. 

      We have identified this as a peer-reviewed journal article in a university journal. We are done evaluating this source.

      Dates

      Examples: Dates

      How old is too old depends on the situation. Here are a few examples of when you need to be aware of dates.

      1. Current Events.

      If you search on Youtube.com for footage or reports about the 2021 volcanic eruption in Hawaii, older videos from eruptions in the past are mixed in and are high on this list, such as this video from many years ago . While information about past eruptions could be useful, it is important not to mix up different events. 

      2. Empirical Research & Review Articles (Clinical Practice Guidelines, Systematic Reviews, or Meta-analyses).

      Science changes! Older research won't have the most up-to-date methods or technology. For empirical research you are using as evidence of current science, try and find sources within the last five years. For rapidly developing science, such as medical science, look for the most recent articles first. 

      3. Legal or Legislative Sources

      Laws, federal rules and regulations, and court decisions are also always changing. If you need to discuss bills under consideration, make sure you are on an official source and on the current legislative session. Use official sources or a database such as NexisUni to look up the text of laws or regulations. NexisUni will flag laws that have been repealed or court cases that were overturned. 

      Misinformation & Disinformation

      Tools for Evaluating Media Bias

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