If you ever had a writing assignment or term paper, you were probably told you had to evaluate your sources, especially internet sources, and probably were given some sort of rules or methodology to use. If you Google “how to evaluate sources,” you’ll find thousands of different ways to do it. But which one should you use? Why do we need to evaluate our sources in the first place? For that matter, why do we even need to use sources? Google is no real help for any of these questions--there are thousands of answers. This guide will explain why and how to use sources.
At its simplest, a primary source is an account of something that happened by the people who were there, such as participants or witnesses. A secondary source is an account of something that happened by people who were NOT there, often framed as a review, summary, or analysis. Technically, a secondary source is a review or analysis of primary sources—there’s also what’s called a tertiary source, that analyzes secondary sources, and so on.
Whether you're reading a social media post, an article from the New York Times or a peer-reviewed research article, you always need to evaluate your source. When you evaluate a source, you are not just checking to see if the information is current, accurate, balanced, and relevant to the topic you're exploring. You also need to ensure that your sources are appropriate for your audience. That is to say they are not too simple or advanced and that they are sources that your audience will believe or trust. For example, you would use entirely different types of sources for a Ph.D. dissertation on self-driving cars, a business proposal to manufacture self-driving cars, or a children’s book about self-driving cars.
Misinformation is everywhere. Wholly or partially fabricated stories are shared endlessly on social media and are sometimes picked up by news outlets. Anybody can post anything they want on social media or create websites for any purpose, sometimes completely disregarding reality.
Scholarly and scientific research is not immune. There has been an increase in research misconduct in recent years, ranging from massaging experimental data so the experiments appear to work out better to the complete fabrication of entire experiments and research programs.
One of the worst situations you can be in as a professional is to present work that depends on faked or fraudulent information that you assumed to be legitimate, but your boss, your client, or your investors know to be untrue. Basing your research on misinformation is at best a waste of your time--at worst, it can directly endanger the lives of any human subjects participating in your research. This can damage your reputation and your company’s reputation sometimes for years to come. Yet it’s easy to prevent this from happening simply by evaluating or fact-checking your sources.
Whenever you use somebody else's words or ideas as part of your own paper, you need to indicate that those words or ideas are not your own and provide some sort of link back to the original document. This is done by what's called a citation. While most citations do not take the form of a clickable link, they do direct the reader back to the original paper.
Citations are important for two reasons:
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