THEA 3890 Porterfield: Evaluating Your Sources

For your assignments in this course, Dr. Porterfield has asked that you use authoritative sources.

Determining Authority

Evaluating a source can vary depending on where you find it.  Below are questions that you can ask yourself to help you determine if a source is academic/authoritative.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• Is the source scholarly or peer-reviewed?
  •  "Peer reviewed" (or "refereed") means that an article is reviewed by experts in that field before the article gets published. 

• Is the source timely?

  • Timeliness depends on the nature of the assignment. Most databases let you limit the search to articles published within a specified timeframe.

• Is the source relevant?

  •  The articles you use should be relevant to your research topic and to each other.

• Where did the source come from?
  • There are many three main types of periodicals: scholarly journals, trade publications, and popular (including magazines and newspapers)

• Who is the author/publisher?
  • Is the author writing in their discipline or field of expertise? 
  • Is the publisher a professional organization? 

Library Databases 

• Databases allow you to select a specific time frame and limit to peer-reviewed journals. 
• Databases provide the option to search by keywords, subject headings to help you find relevant articles. 
• Information about the publication is often included in database search results. 

• The database may contain other articles by the author, which can help determine their field of expertise. 

Websites 

• Who is the author? 
  • You may need to explore the website or do another search on the Internet. 
  • Are they qualified to write on the topic? 
• Is the website created by a professional organization? 
• Are there spelling, grammar, or other errors? 

Wikipedia – Not Authoritative

• Can be a good starting place to help discover keywords to search to find more relevant articles in your database searches.