Evaluating Resources: Scholarly, Popular, and the Web

Know the Difference Between Scholarly and Popular Journals/Magazines

Both kinds of journals and magazines can be useful sources of information.

Popular magazines and newspapers are good for overviews, recent news, first-person accounts, and opinions about a topic.

Scholarly journals, often called scientific or peer-reviewed journals, are good sources of actual studies or research conducted about a particular topic. They go through a process of review by experts, so the information is usually highly reliable.

Scholarly Journals	Popular Journals
Written by experts	Written by journalists
Articles are peer-reviewed or approved by experts in the field	Not peer reviewed
A list of references, citations, and/or a bibliography appears at the end of the article	No list of references
Reading level is advanced	Reading level is basic
Examples: Journal of the American Medical Association; Journal of American History	Examples: Newsweek; Time Magazine

Evaluating Web Resources

Anyone can create a page and put it on the web, without going through any kind of review or quality control process. You need to take responsibility for evaluating the information you find.

Here are some criteria you can use to evaluate information you find on a website:

Reviewed Sites	Find websites via search engines that only list sites that have been reviewed by a person with experience in a particular subject area. For example: Infomine Librarians Index to the Internet Scout Report
Compare	Compare similarities and differences to other sites. This can reveal controversies on a topic and help you detect bias.
Corroborate	Corroborate the information by double-checking the same topic in reviewed sources such as scholarly journal articles or to reference resources, such as specialized encyclopedias.

 

There are also many “checklists” for evaluating websites.

Trust your instincts! If it doesn't sound right to you, you might not want to use the information in your paper.

You should use the same criteria to evaluate any information source.

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