General Tips
Good quality sources are ones that are accurate, well-written, are current, cover their topic thoroughly, have a clearly stated purpose, and provide supporting documentation.
More information at
What's the article about?
- Is the article really about your topic?
- Does it have the right approach for your topic?
- Is your topic the main focus or only mentioned in the article?
What kind of article is it?
- Some database records include this information as a separate field or as part of the abstract.
- Here are some examples:
- Journal - a research journal article
- Review - not original research, summarizes the range of current research on the topic and contains many references
- Peer Reviewed - also a research journal article, from a journal requiring experts review articles before publication.
- Editorial - for example, a newspaper editorial
- Letter - a letter to the editor
- The number of pages can also be a clue to what kind of article it is because research articles tend to be longer than news briefs, for example.
Is it from a scholarly journal?
- What's the difference between a popular and a scholarly article?
- If it's scholarly, is it a primary research article or a secondary source?
- Does the title of the article sound scholarly?
- Does the title of the journal sound scholarly?
- Is there an author listed?
- Does the article contain results of a research study, e.g. charts, graphs, diagrams?
- Does the article include a bibliography or list of references?
Is it long enough to be of use?
- Articles of one or two pages will only be a summary and are often too brief to be of help.
- Usually research articles will be five or more pages.
Is it out of date?
- When was the article published?
- When was the research reported in the article actually done?
- With many scientific topics it's important to have up-to-date information because new findings can rapidly influence scholarly opinions.