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Boatwright Memorial Library

Scholarly Sources

Scholarly writing or academic scholarship tends to come from people (like your professors) producing knowledge and engaging in conversation with fellow scholars in their field. This work may be published in academic journals, as a book, a chapter in an edited volume, or an online publication.

Learn to recognize scholarly sources with the following criteria:

  • The author most likely will list their credentials such as their highest degree, university affiliation, and department.
  • The writer uses highly specialized language, specific to a discipline or area of study.
  • The work includes extensive citations, bibliographies, or footnotes, showing the author is aware of a body of scholarship relevant to the field.
  • The content has been published by an academic institution or university press, the journal is specific to a field of study or discipline.
  • The author's work is most likely "peer reviewed" or has gone through a rigorous editorial process by fellow experts in the field, which can take a long time. If you can't tell if something is peer reviewed, look up the journal or press website and see if you can find something out about the editorial process. Otherwise, you can always use a "peer review" filter in your databases search!

Remember- academic scholarship is only one type of information source. It isn't necessarily more credible or valid than other types of sources. Always be thinking critically about the author's methodologies and data analysis, and look for clear biases and political perspectives.

Identifying Different Types of Information Sources

We gather information from all types of sources. Depending on what our project is, many types of sources might be referenced:

  • Legal documents
  • Mission driven work of activists and advocacy groups
  • Opinion pieces and editorials
  • Journalism, news media
  • Speeches

Consider why a source relevant to to your research project before you cite it. You might reference a source for any number of reasons, for example- an autobiography might reveal someone's firsthand account, or a news article might tell us something about how media reported on an event in the context of the times.

Regardless of what type of source you are looking for, make sure you do your own critical analysis. Determine the purpose of the source of information - is it intended to educate, persuade, or just "present the facts"? Determine the author's expertise, analyze the publication or platform and determine its purpose or audience. All of this is important and will inform your decision to incorporate the source into your research or not.

Activity

Look at the document assigned to your group and use your analytic skills to determine the following:

  • What kind of document is it? What is the publication it comes from?
  • What can we tell about its focus?
  • Who is the author or authors? What can you tell about their credentials and areas of expertise?
  • How can you tell if the article is scholarly or not? Is the article meant to educate, present an opinion, provide analysis, or present "the facts"?

Group 1: Attitudes about human trafficking: Individual differences related to belief and victim blame

Group 2: Understanding adolescent female prostitution: A literature review

Group 3: Child trafficking for household labor

Group 4: Tennessee Republicans declare 'war' on human trafficking amid special session