When evaluating sources consider:
Authority: Who is the author and publisher? What are their credentials?
Purpose: What is the intent of the author, editor, or publisher? Sometimes the introduction, preface, or back cover give hints at this!
Objectivity: What is the bias? How objective or subjective is the work?
Accuracy: How credible is this source? Corroborate the information or arguments of the resource with other sources.
Currency: When was the work published? Is it relevant?
Scholarly vs. Popular
Scholarly
Scholarly sources are written by researchers and scholars and are meant to support in-depth research. Often a scholarly source includes technical or formal language with references and suggested readings.
Example: a peer-reviewed journal article found on EBSCO or JSTOR
Popular
Popular sources are written by freelance writers or staff writers for a wide general audience in order to entertain, inform, or persuade.
Example: a news article, a Buzzfeed article
Peer-Reviewed and Academic Journals
What is peer-review?
A board of subject experts will review and evaluate journal articles before they are accepted for publication. A journal article can be a scholarly article and also not peer-reviewed.
Looking for peer-reviewed articles?
To ensure your results are going to be peer-reviewed, select peer-reviewed when using EBSCOhost, JSTOR, or the library catalogue.
Peter Turkstra Library, Redeemer University , 777 Garner Road East, Ancaster, ON, L9K 1J4, Canada Circulation Desk Telephone: 905.648.2139 ext. 4266, Email: library@redeemer.ca