Mat-Su College: Biology

It's worth taking a moment to evaluate any source you find. Is it credible? Will it help you make your point, or will your readers scoff at it?

One popular way to evaluate a source is to apply the CRAAP Test. This is a series of questions you can ask about your source. There are no right or wrong answers to the individual questions or the test as a whole. The questions are guides to help you evaluate your source.

Currency: The time relationship between the source's publication date and my research need

• When was the item written or last updated?
• If the information is dated, is it still suitable for your topic?
• How frequently does information change about your topic?

Relevance: The extent to which this source meets my research needs

• Does the source meet the stated requirements of my assignment?
• Does the source contribute to my research needs or answer my research question?
• Who is the intended audience of this source?
• If the information refutes your ideas, how will this change your argument?
• Does the material provide you with current information?
• How does using this source help me understand the larger conversation around this research question/need?

Authority: The author or creator of the information

• Are there details about the author?
• What is the author's level of education, experience, and/or occupation?
• What qualifies the author to write about this topic?
• What affiliations does the author have? Could these affiliations affect their position?
• What organization or body published the information? Is it authoritative?
• Does it have an explicit position or bias?
• Is there an easy way to contact the author if I have questions?

Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content

• Was the information reviewed by others (editors or subject experts) before it was published? What citations or references support the author's claims?
• Is information in the source presented as fact, opinion or propaganda? Are biases clear?
• Can you verify information from referenced information in the source?
• Is the information written clearly and free of typographical and grammatical mistakes?
• Does the source look to be edited before publication? A clean, well-presented paper does not always indicate accuracy, but usually at least means more eyes have been on the information.

Purpose: The reason the information exists

• Is the author's purpose to inform, sell, persuade, or entertain?
• Does the source have an obvious bias or prejudice?
• Is the article presented from multiple points of view?
• Does the author omit important facts or data that might disprove their argument?
• Is the author's language informal, joking, emotional, or impassioned?
• Is the information clearly supported by evidence?

- Modified from The Information Literacy User's Guide, pp. 73-76, and Phoenix College's CRAPP detector handout.

There are other "checklists" of questions that you can use to evaluate a source.

It's often easy to tell if an article is scholarly. Once you've seen a few scholarly articles, you'll know the signs. (Complex titles, few if any graphics, identified authors, lots of citations, etc.)

What's harder is knowing whether a scholarly article is any good. Many times you don't even need to know. A scholarly article, any scholarly article, will be "good enough." But if you really want to impress your readers (including the professor), keep reading to find some questions you can ask yourself about a scholarly article.

One way to determine just how good a scholarly article is by looking at who wrote it.

Scholarly articles always include the name and credentials of the author. Credentials include details like the author's level of education and the place they work.

Start with where the author works. Right or wrong, an article will carry more weight if it is written by a professor at a top university such as Harvard or MIT. If you've never heard of the college or university that the author works for don't sweat it.

Now look at the author's name. Do they have a PhD or some other advanced degree? Is it a name you've heard of? It probably won't be, and that's fine, but then again it just might be one of the "big names" you've come across in your research.

If the author is one you've never heard of, don't be afraid of Googling them. Many academics will have a CV (fancy resume) that is easily available online. They might also have a biography page on their college's website. These will tell you how much they've written before.

There are a few prestigious scholarly journals that are somewhat widely known: The New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, and a few others. These are the ones that get namechecked in the news from time to time.

For every well-known journal, there are many thousands more few people have ever heard of: Antipode, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Canadian Issues, Library Hi Tech, etc.

There are several rating methods that can help you figure out if a journal is "good." These rating methods might look at how many times a journal's articles get cited, or how choosy the journal is in accepting submissions.

There are websites that publish, for free, journal rankings. One that you can easily search is Journal Guide:

• Journal Guide provides "SNIP" scores for journals. The higher, the better. Journal Guide also indicates whether a journal is "verified" as a "reputable, recognized" journal. It can also provide other bits of information about journals. For instance, it tells us that Nature only accepts 8% of papers submitted to it. Very exclusive -- another sign of quality.

There are also sites that list journals by rank, but don't let you search for individual titles (at least not for free). Instead, you can view lists of journals by academic discipline:

• Google Scholar publishes an "h5-index" for journals. The higher, the better. Example: Nature's score is 379, French Politics's score is 7.
• SCIMAGO Journal Rank publishes its own ranking of journals.
• Scopus lists SNIP, IPP, and SJR. As before, the higher the score, the better.

There is another way to find more about a journal. Ulrichsweb has detailed information on periodicals such as journals and magazines. It will often say if a journal is scholarly.

Within Ulrichsweb, search the name of the journal you want to check. In the search results, look for a referee jersey icon next to the name of the journal you searched for. The referee jersey indicates that the journal is refereed (aka scholarly or peer-reviewed):

Click the title of a journal to find out more about it.