Academic writing

Evaluating resources

You should evaluate the quality of the resources you select. An article about eating disorders published in a magazine like Who Weekly will be very different from one published in a medical journal.

Use these criteria to evaluate any information you find:

Relevance

• are the important issues covered in enough depth?

• is the language of an appropriate level? E.g. not too basic or specialised

• does the information cover the time period and place you are researching?

• is the source appropriate? Is it an original account such as a primary source or is it someone's analysis or interpretation of original material
  

Currency

• what is the date of publication of the books or articles?

• science, medicine and computing require very current information – are the works recently published?

• when was the website last updated?
  

Reliability

• are details of the authors qualifications or the organisation they are associated with provided?

• are the details of the publisher provided?

• is the journal peer-reviewed or refereed indicating that the articles were selected by experts in their field?

• read more about peer reviewed journal articles in the
  Online Information Skills Tutorial: Are they peer reviewed?
  

Accuracy

• does the author, who could be an individual, group or organisation, have a particular bias which may give less credibility to their argument?

• do facts or statistics provided come from a reliable source, e.g. Australian Bureau of Statistics?

• is emotive language used? This may indicate that the information is opinion rather than fact

• does the domain in the URL of a website indicate that the site is a government or educational body or just a commercial organisation?

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