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Research Step-by-Step

Library research basics for beginners and returning students.

Getting Started: Quick Questions

Evaluating Web Sources | Evaluating Scholarly Sources

How do you decide which sources are best for your assignment? Explore the boxes below for beginner advice and resources for source evaluation.

Three smiling students with textbooks at a library table.Quick questions to get started:

  1. Who created it? Does the author have experience or education related to the topic?
  2. When was it published? Is the content up to date for your topic? (Don't forget - you may want older materials for subjects like history or literature.)
  3. Who is the intended audience? Is the source meant for the general public or for researchers? Remember that for college-level research, you usually need some scholarly sources.

Evaluating Web Sources

The Internet offers a lot of reliable, free, easy-to-find resources: webpages, videos, podcasts, and more. However, it also contains a lot of wrong, misleading, or even malicious content. Be extra careful when using the Internet for academic research.

The SIFT Method | Watch Video Overview

SIFT is a quick, four-step method to decide whether an online source is credible (or not).

  1. Stop. Pause before engaging with or sharing an article, video, meme, or other web content.
  2. Investigate the source. Leave the source's original page and get more information about that person or organization's reputation. Wikipedia is a great source for overviews on public people or large organizations.
  3. Find better coverage. Are other sources (e.g., reputable news outlets) covering the same topic in the same way?
  4. Trace claims back to the original source. Follow shares and likes back to the original content creator. Are they reliable?

SIFT Method Infographic: Stop, Investigate, Find, Trace

SIFT infographic from "SIFT (The Four Moves)" by Mike Caulfield (2019), licensed CC-BY 4.0

Evaluating Scholarly Sources

In addition to (1) publication date and (2) author credentials, a third way to evaluate scholarly sources is by peer review. Peer-reviewed sources have been evaluated by scholarly experts to make sure the research is high-quality before it gets published.

Video: Peer Review

An introduction to peer review: why it's important, how it works, and how to find peer-reviewed research. [Time: 4:09]