Quick Guide to Evaluating Sources
When you encounter any kind of source, consider:
- Authority - Who is the author? What is their point of view?
- Purpose - Why was the source created? Who is the intended audience?
- Publication & format - Where was it published? In what medium?
- Relevance - How is it relevant to your research? What is its scope?
- Date of publication - When was it written? Has it been updated?
- Documentation - Did they cite their sources? Who did they cite?
For a deeper dive on source evaluation, see our Evaluating Resources Guide.
Evaluating Sources - Tactics
There are many ways to evaluate sources. Here are a few tactics:
- Use search features like peer-review limiters to only see peer-reviewed search results. (Note: This may only return articles and exclude books from your search.)
- Look at any information provided in the source about the author(s) and their affiliations.
- Click on the hyperlinked author name in a source record to search for other works by that author.
- Find book reviews to understand another person's view of the book.
- Search for the author or publisher in Google to find information about them and their other publications.
- Use 'cited by' features in Google Scholar and some other systems to see how much the source has been cited by others. (Note: With newer sources (under 5 years old) expect fewer citations. It takes time to publish academic work!)
