| CRITERIA |
WHAT TO LOOK FOR |
| Audience |
Who is the intended audience of the work? Is it intended for an academic audience or a popular one? For adults or children? Determining the audience can especially help you to distinguish between scholarly journals and popular magazines. |
| Format |
Ask yourself what the format of the source is. This can often give clues as to the credibility of the source. If you are looking for a scholarly source, you likely will not find it in a pamphlet or in a popular journal. |
| Objectivity |
Is the source fact, opinion, or propaganda? Keep in mind that nothing is completely unbiased, even statistics do not tell just one story. However, the degree of bias varies. Ask yourself if the author has a vested interest in you believing what is written. With some sources in religious studies, it is useful to ask if the material is intended for the believer, to defend religious beliefs, or to convert unbelievers. |
| Coverage |
What does that material cover? This question rarely addresses the credibility of a work, but will help you determine if the source is appropriate to your research needs. If you are researching Tibetan Buddhism and find a book on Asia or an article on Chan Buddhism, these sources are likely not going to be helpful. |
| Citations to other works |
Check how many citations the work uses and what works the source is referencing. Usually the presence of citations indicates some degree of academic integrity, though don't depend on this alone. As you become more and more familiar with certain areas of research, you will be able to evaluate the works that your source has referenced to help you evaluate the quality of the source |
| Authority |
What authority does the author have? This question can be a difficult one to figure out when you are new to an area or specialization. Some clues that help even if you are in unfamiliar territory are:
- Affiliation: Are they part of a university or research institution?
- Familiarity: Have they been mentioned by your professor or in previous classes? (Be careful though, when a name is familiar sometimes it isn't for good reasons!)
- Citations: Have you seen them cited regularly in other academically sound work?
- Quick Web Search: if still in doubt, enter their name into a Web search engine. This method can be hit or miss, especially if the author has a common name. It is a better method for affirming that someone is credible than for establishing that they are not. In other words, you will likely decide it is a good source or be no further along than before.
- Publisher: Is the publisher a respected name in the field?
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| Currency |
When was the source printed and how many times has it been reprinted? If you have found a book whose content perfectly matches the information you are trying to find but it was printed in the early seventies, you will have to judge how far your area has changed to decide if the source is still relevant. If a book has been reprinted many times, it is a useful indication that the book is a standard in the discipline. |
| Library possession |
A useful tool to check if a source is credible is to look it up on WorldCat (note there is also a free version of WorldCat) and see how many libraries own the work. |
| Reviews |
When you have found a source that you are not sure about, but believe that it would be very useful for your research, try to locate a review of it. |