Learning Objectives
At the end of this section, you will know how to:
- Find information about a publisher or journal, such as what kind of peer review process they use, what their ethical guidelines are, and what sort of articles they seek to publish
- Evaluate the reliability of an information source in terms of the entities and/or organizations who published the information source, and the reputations for quality and integrity of those entities/organizations
- Evaluate the authority of an information source in terms of the author's expertise, by judging the author's educational credentials, career history, and publication history
- Understand bias and agenda, and detect when there is strong potential for them in an information source
- Evaluate the impact factor (scholarly significance) of a publication by identifying how many times it has been cited, and know when it is necessary to check that
- Locate reviews of information sources, and know when it is necessary to check these
- Evaluate the validity of an information source from an appropriate disciplinary perspective about what constitutes valid knowledge
- Evaluate the validity of an information source from a general scholarly perspective about what constitutes valid knowledge
- Evaluate the accuracy of an information source against other information sources
- Evaluate the accuracy of an information source against real world tests.
