Evaluating Sources

As you research, you will likely encounter hundreds or even thousands of resources that could be relevant to your research project. Clearly you first want to narrow your search to a list of material that is most likely to be relevant and useful for your project. Ultimately, you want to choose sources that inform your research question or advance your argument. You should also consider sources that challenge any established norms in the discipline and preconceived notions you may have so that your project is balanced and adequately addresses all aspects of your topic. 

Research is a time-consuming and iterative process that will engage your critical thinking skills. There are no “perfect” sources for any assignment; and in fact, if you find a source that says exactly what you want to say, you may want to reconsider your research question to ensure that you can contribute something original to the existing literature on your topic. You must make decisions as you work about which sources will be most useful for your research, which to reject, and which you may want to revisit. The type of information that you need will likely expand as you progress with your research, and you should compare any new sources with your existing source lists. When choosing sources, you have to weigh a variety of factors in order to decide which ones best suit your needs. 

Engaging with research material by critically evaluating it is one of the most important aspects of your research project. You should never cherry-pick quotes and drop them into predetermined placeholders in your paper or use entire quoted sentences in place of your own writing. Nor should you quote a source unless you thoroughly understand it and are certain that you can accurately represent the author’s intent. Quotes and paraphrased evidence should be smoothly integrated into your writing to support your ideas in such a way that attribution is clear, sentence structures are logical, and the quoted references enhance the point you are trying to make. Thoroughly evaluating sources helps you to avoid writing problems and plagiarism because the process helps you to:

• Develop awareness and understanding of the scholarly conversations that take place about important aspects of your field
• Formulate and refine your own research questions as you discover gaps or inconsistencies in the published literature
• Weigh the relative authority of authors who produce information in your field
• Keep an open mind when encountering varied and sometimes conflicting perspectives
• Detect unreliable, poorly researched, or poorly presented information
• Learn the conventions of publishing your field so that you can be an effective contributor to the scholarly conversation
• Give appropriate credit to the ideas of others

While you will spend many hours engaging with sources during the research stage of your project, there are factors you can consider that will make the selection process more efficient. Explore the other tabs on this page for more information.

If you are new to research or need a refresher, visit the Getting Started with Library Research guide.