EN110 - Writing and Inquiry in Public Contexts

When using a book, article, report, or website for your research, it is important to gauge how reliable the source is. Consider the following when looking at any information source:

1. Who is the author?
2. When was the source published?
3. Who is the intended audience?
4. Is the content objective or does it have a bias?

Is it scholarly?

It can be a tough job to discern whether an information source is accurate or good research, which is one reason why your instructors and librarians require or encourage you to look at scholarly (academic) sources.

The main purpose of scholarly publications is to report on original research to make the information available to the rest of the scholarly world. In other words, their audience is other scholars, researchers, and people in academia.

Here are some tips to getting your hands on scholarly information:

• Search for articles using library databases such as Academic Search Premier that allow you to limit results to scholarly or peer-reviewed articles
• Look at cited reference lists and bibliographies found at the end of research articles and books

Evaluating Books and Articles

Evaluating Internet Sources

Recognizing Misinformation and Disinformation