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CCOW Source Analysis

Credentials

When analyzing a source we must first look at the credentials of the creators. You need to look at both the author's and the publisher's credentials.

When investigating the author consider the following:

  • Does the author hold a degree in a relevant topic?
  • Do they work in a relevant field?  
  • Are they part of a relevant professional association? 
  • Have they written on this topic before? 
  • Do they provide contact information from a reputable source (such as a university extension, for example jdoe@molloy.edu). Are they listed in the directory of the institution they claim to work for? What do other sources say about the institution they are from? 
  • When you search for their name online, are there any issues with this work or any other works they may have written before?
  • Do they have relevant experience beyond their career (for example, were they an eyewitness giving an account)?

When investigating the publisher consider the following:

  • Have they printed on this topic before? 
  • Do they charge to publish works?
  • Do they charge to peer review? 
  • When you search for the company's name online, do you see any controversies or complaints about other works they have published in the past?

Scholar's Guide to Scholarly Sources

The highest level of trustworthiness for most academic subjects is found in scholarly sources, as opposed to popular sources. Scholar-ly articles are written by and for scholars, i.e. experts and researchers in a field. Pop-ular sources are written for the general pop-ulation. 

Scholarly usually, but not always, means peer-reviewed. Peer-reviewed means that a panel of peers — other experts in the field — review an author's paper to decide if it is worth publishing. If they decide that the author has done good work and that the paper advances the knowledge of the field, they sign off on the paper. (Often they ask for revisions first.)

Scientist prepares to run a literal gauntlet to the "Paper Accepted" finish line

You might have heard of various problems with peer review. It's slow. It can be expensive. Reviewers are human and their judgment is subjective, and can vary widely from reviewer to reviewer. Biases can creep in, or even outright abuse. There have been cases of reviewers harshly grading a paper to delay publication and then stealing its ideas for themselves. The system is imperfect, but that's because humans are imperfect. But the system usually works well, and is the best we have at filtering good and bad information in academic scholarship. So if your professor wants you to find a peer-reviewed source, that's why.

So how do you know if a source is peer-reviewed? Check the next tab above.

Okay, so how do you find scholarly, peer-reviewed sources? In two, complementary ways:

1. Use the JETfind box and check off Peer-reviewed Journals under Availability 

screenshot of the availablilty option in JETfind

Be aware, though, that this box filters results to the journal level. That is, it narrows your search down to only those journals that use the peer review process (as you can see, in this database "peer reviewed" and "scholarly" are synonymous). But not everything published in a peer reviewed journal is peer reviewed. Book reviews, for instance, aren't vetted by a board of experts. And some journals, like Nature, offer short, informational articles on the current news or trends which are also not peer reviewed. The database knows which publications have a peer review process, but it has no idea if an individual article meets that criterion. So you still need to:

2. Use your head. Evaluate the article to decide if it's scholarly. Ask these questions:

  • Who is it written for? Is the language used the expert language of the field (which makes those articles so much, er, fun to read!) or is it written in a style and language that a broad audience can understand?
  • How long is it? Scholarly articles are usually longer than a page or two (though there are plenty of non-scholarly long-winded articles, too, of course).
  • Does it include a nice, juicy list of citations? Scholars cite their work.
  • Do the authors have academic credentials that check out?
  • Is the journal well-respected, with pedigree? (Googling can help you figure this out.)

You’ve probably heard primary sources mentioned, possibly in a reverential tone. (My background in in history, so I tend to tend to say “primary sources” with appropriate hushed awe.) That’s because primary sources are the sources closest to the subject you’re studying. They are the “raw data,” so to speak.

If you’re studying World War II, for instance, a primary source would be a letter from a soldier at the front, or the actual text of Neville Chamberlain’s doomed “Peace in Our Time” agreement with Germany. In the sciences, a primary source might be an experiment or a controlled trial that provides data about some aspect of nature.

Secondary sources are, as you might guess from the name, a step removed from the subject of study. Secondary sources take the data from primary sources and interpret and/or analyze it. In our history example, a secondary source might be a book or article in which a historian examines Chamberlain’s silly appeasement strategy and justly lambasts the British and French for not really believing the Germans would attack Poland, and being too slow to defend their ally. In the sciences, a secondary source might be a review article that summarizes the research on a subject. Textbooks are also secondary sources.

Some people also add a category for tertiary sources, which offer well-known information in a collected and distilled form without adding anything new: encyclopedias, almanacs, etc.