Skip to Main Content College of the Rockies
← BACK TO LEARNING COMMONS PAGE
Learning Commons
CONTACT

Evaluating Books, Scholarly & Non-Scholarly, Journals, Articles, Websites

Choosing the right sources for your research can be challenging. This guide presents information to help you determine what kind of materials you need for your work and how to evaluate each source.

About Evaluating Journals & Articles

 

There are a number of questions you should ask about a journal article before using it as a research resource. These questions focus on 2 areas:

  • authority (i.e. author / editor / publisher details)
  • content

Critically Evaluate Journal's Editor/Publisher or Article's Author

 

Questions to ask:
  • Is the author an expert in the field?
  • What work or educational experiences does the author have?
  • With which institution, organization or company is the author affiliated?
  • Has the author written other publications?
  • Is the publisher well known? Is the publisher a recognized scholarly publisher? Such publishers include Springer, Academic Press, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Blackwell Publishing, CRC Press, Routledge, Wiley, Interscience, Harcourt, Blackwell Synergy, Nature Publishing, Macmillan.
  • Does the publisher stand to benefit from the research or argument presented in the article?

Critically Evaluate the Journal or Journal Article's Content

 

When evaluating the content of an article, you need to ;check if it is accurate relevant Questions to ask:

  • Does the title indicate that the article is too specific or not specific enough? Is there a subtitle with more information?
  • What audience is the article directed towards?
  • Does the article address a topic from a certain time frame and/or geographic area?
  • What sources did the author use?
  • Is the information current and up-to-date? Does it need to be?
  • Is the article peer reviewed i.e. from a refereed journal?
  • Is only information from peer-reviewed articles required?

Note

  • In terms of finding scholarly journal articles, you may be required to find only peer reviewed journal articles. In some instances, you may be able to limit your search results to this type of journal article by using the limiters located in the left navigation pane within the database interface.
  • Check to see if there are ;scholarly articles which can contain ;headings such as abstracts, methodology, discussion of result, list of references, conclusions, etc.
  • introduction article was written and what the author hopes to accomplish with it. Often the author will also let you know what perspective of bias he/she brings to the topic.
  • Look for a reference list/bibliography. This list shows you what kind of sources the author used to write the article.
  • Browse the Abstract to see what the article covers.
  • Search library databases or Google Scholar to find out how many times the article has been cited by others.
  • Look at the subject headings assigned to a search result to help you check for content relevance.
  • When deciding if an article's content is current, check the publication date and the dates of the references used in the article's reference list/bibliography.
  • Articles with numerous typographical mistakes, grammatical errors or other inaccuracies, are not reliable.