University Writing Seminar (UWS) Research Guide

When you're evaluating a resource or source there are a bunch of different aspects to consider. Some of them might apply to your source, others might not. There are even different ways to evaluate academic sources (also known as scholarly or peer-reviewed) compared to news sources, internet sources, or even social media.

Whether the source is academic (scholarly, peer-reviewed), news, social media, a video, or even a primary source, the most important piece to evaluating a resource is: Is this source relevant to my topic?

• Is this source useful? How can you use it? 
• Is this source a foundational part of my argument, or extra information that might help?
• Is this source relevant, or is it off-topic?
• How could this source help or hurt your paper's main argument?

The following tips here apply mostly to the academic sources you'll be using as the foundation of your research:

What is the scope?

• How broad is the source? How specific?
• Does the work provide an overview, or is it focused on only one part of your topic or research?
• Does the scope of the information resource meet your expectations?
• Does the resource cover the right time period that you are interested in?  

Audience

• Who is the intended audience for this source?
• Is the material too technical, too clinical, too basic, or just right for you?
• Is the material too technical, clinical, basic, or just right for your audience (aka your professor)? 

Academic vs. Popular

• Is the source academic/scholarly/peer reviewed or not? 
• Is this a news source or an opinion source?
• What kind of publication is this from--an academic journal? A magazine? Something else?

Documentation

• Does the article, book, or website have footnotes, a bibliography, or list of works cited? 
• Does the source link to other sources, even if it doesn't have a list of works cited?
• Does the author list their credentials?

Currency

• When was the source published? 
• Is the source current or out of date for your topic?  
• If it is a website, when was it last updated?

Tip: Topics in some subject areas will often require more current information, other topics might require older information, or historical material. 

Authority

• Who is the author?
• What are their credentials?
• Is the author associated with a reputable institution or organization?
• How do you know if the author's institution is reputable?

Objectivity

• What point of view does the author represent?
• Is the article and editorial that is trying to argue a position?
• Is the article published in a magazine that has a particular editorial position?

Context

• How much context does my audience need to understand why you're using this source?
• If its from an academic journal, what kind of introduction does it need?
• if it's from a news source, how do you explain why you're using it?
• If it's from a non-academic source like social media, what's the reason for using it? What kind of evidence does it provide?

*Some of the material on this page was adapted from the University of California Berkeley Library's website, "Critical Evaluation of Resources" and Cornell University Library's "Critically Analyzing Information Resources."

For many of your assignments at Brandeis, your professors will ask you to use scholarly articles in your research. Library databases often have a menu option for limiting your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals, but you should also understand the characteristics of a scholarly journal article so that you'll be able to recognize these sources.

This chart outlines the basic differences between articles from popular publications and articles from scholarly journals:

This chart is based on the University of Texas Austin Libraries' "Popular, Scholarly, or Trade?" guide and UNC Chapel Hill's "Types of Journals" guide.

Peer Review in Three Minutes by NCSU Libraries is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US.

Find more short videos by NCSU Libraries at their website.