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 database searches!
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.
Website Evaluation
On the World Wide Web, scholarly researchers face the challenge of navigating and extracting useable information from over 100 million indexed sites and over 46 billion pages. Here are some signs of a good scholarly web resource:
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Trusted URLs |
.edu, .gov, .mil contain the most reliable and unbiased info |
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Authority |
Look for the author's name, credentials and affiliation to give clues to the contents' quality and objectivity. You should expect the same information quality from a web page as you would from a scholarly print or database source. For pages authored by organizations, look for the site's "About Us" section. |
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Currency |
When was the page created or last updated? |
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Bibliography |
Sources used for the page should be cited and working links provided for more information on the topic. |
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Accuracy |
Trustworthy sites should not have spelling, grammatical or factual errors. |
Think Like a Journalist
The basic rules for evaluating a source for quality are the same as the "5 W's" of journalism:
Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
Who produced the doucment, image, video, sound file, etc. and what do you know about them, their credentials, and their motives?
What is the factual or emotional content of the source and does it reflect reality?
When was it produced and does that time frame alter its potential usefulnes?
Where was it published and does that publisher evaluate sources befor publishing them? Does the place of publication reflect on the competence or impartiality of the source? Is this a re-publication and, if so, where was it originally published?
Why was the item produced and published? To educate? To influence? To sell something? To promote the creator?
Critical Evaluation of All Sources
- Using Primary Sources from DoHistory.orgExplanation of primary sources from a history guide.
- Using Primary Sources on the Web - American Library AssociationGuide to understanding primary sources from the web and best practices in searching.
Help Menu
- Library Catalog This link opens in a new windowSearch our library catalog (aka OneSearch) for all types of sources. It combines results from many of our databases. (Ex Libris)
- OneSearch This link opens in a new windowUse this discovery tool to search most of the University Libraries' collections, including books, journal articles, newspapers, dissertations, music, and video recordings. (Ex Libris)