UPDATE (5/20/26 @ 7:30am AZ time):
The GCU Library's updated version of LopeCat, the library’s online catalog, is live! For more details on what has changed, visit the What's New Guide .
Introduction to Graduate Studies: Finding Websites
The Internet: A Good Starting Point
Starting with a general Google search can be a useful step in locating background information on your topic and determining keywords to represent your research concepts.
Remember that although the Internet can be full of great information, it can also be misleading and present very biased views. Anyone can post anything online. You have to carefully evaluate what you use (if anything) from the Internet when using sources for your college assignments. The GCU Library's Evaluating Sources: Internet Sources Research Guide can help you find credible Internet sites, or watch the tutorial below.
The best place to find credible, scholarlyinformation is in the resources located in the GCU Library!
Websites are the place to locate:
- Government information
- Government statistical sources, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Census Bureau
- Official corporate information, such as mission statements and annual reports
- Professional organizations & associations
- News and current events
Though you won't find websites in the library research databases, you can find some recommended websites on the subject research guides.Check out those guides by subject on the menu below.
Evaluating Digital Sources
This tutorial takes a look at how to evaluate sources you find online outside the GCU library.
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?
- 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.
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Critical Thinking: Tools for Evaluating Research
by
ISBN: 9780520291843Publication Date: 2017-08-15
Quick Tips for Research on the Internet:
- Quality:When using web pages or documents for research, the number one thing to consider is the quality of the source- you want to be sure to use information that is from a reliable and authoritative source.
- Domain Searching:When searching with Google, you can limit your searches to specific kinds of sites, for example:
.edu--for educational institutions.gov--for government sites
You can enter your keywords directly into the search box followed by the words: site:[domain] no space between "site:" and domain (.edu or .gov). Make sure to include the period between the colon and domain.
Examples:
health care statistics site:.gov
OR
academic standards site:.edu
- Generally speaking, information from these sites are more authoritative, and more suitable for university/academic research. .Gov is particularly useful as it is a highly restricted domain, for use by local, state, or federal official websites only.
- Be careful!.org is not limited to only Not-For-Profit organizations. It may be used by anyone - be wary of organizations you don't recognize or that appear to be selling a lot of products.
- Professional organizations can be an important resource. If you are uncertain about an organization, use Google to search their name and look for news articles or links from organizations you do recognize.
Citing Websites
- Citation Basics Tutorial This link opens in a new window
This tutorial walks through the basics of finding the citing information in common source types like articles and websites.
Many websites will not list individual authors.
- For ALL government, association, or company official sites, if there is no individual person's name, use the name of the group as the author.
- If there is an author listed, include it. This article from Starbucks is an example of the kind of corporate information that can have an author and might come up in an assignment.
For websites you will need to find:
- An author, even if a group name like American Nurses Association
- A title--whatever is the most logical
- A date if there is one--dates may be missing!
- The URL/address--take this directly from your address bar
Some items on websites are not webpage sources.
- Watch for magazine articles in particular, which are often online but are not cited as webpages
Referencing a specific page of a website:
Formats:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work . Website. http://URL
Corporation or Organization. (Year). Title of page . http://URL
*Note, use a company, organization, or agency as the author only if individual person(s) are not named. Use full titles of companies or agencies, for example Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not CDC. Include the site name if it is substantially different from the group name used as author.
Examples:
