KYVL: How to Do Research: Authority

Can the author be identified?

The authors of books and scholarly journal articles are clearly identified. That may not be true of magazines, newspapers, and Web pages. If the author is unknown, then the credibility of your information source becomes even more important.

Is the author qualified to write on this topic?

Scholarly journals are more authoritative for your academic research purposes than popular magazines. The chart below explains why.

PRINT	Scholarly Journals	Popular Magazines
Author	Scholars in the field	Reporters or staff writers
Audience	Scholars and Students	General Public
Citing of Sources	Yes	Not generally
Peer Reviewed/ Refereed	Yes	No
Purpose	Report on original research	Provide general information, entertain
Publisher	Academic or professional organization	Commercial

Some commercial online databases provide an option to limit search results to only peer-reviewed articles. While this option targets scholarly information sources, it significantly limits search results.

*Peer-review is a system through which professionals in the same area as the researcher review his or her work to ensure its quality before the work is published.

Unit 5: Evaluating Information: 3 of 7

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Last updated: Thursday, 24-Jun-2004 16:50:55 EDT