SOC 232: Social Inequality in Society: Source Evaluation

Scholarly journals (aka academic journals) publish articles by scholars and researchers in their field and are intended for the academic community.  Many scholarly journals are also peer-reviewed (aka evaluated), which means they have an editorial board with additional experts in the field review all articles submitted for publication to ensure that they meet academic standards.  Examples of scholarly journals are American Journal of Archaeology and Journal of Abnormal Psychology.  Some databases allow you to limit your results to Scholarly/Academic/Peer-Reviewed Journals (look for a check box on the database home page).

Popular journals are intended for the general public, and their journalists may have some knowledge of a field but are usually not academic experts.    Examples of popular journals are Scientific American and Psychology Today.  

How can you distinguish a scholarly journal from a popular journal?  Refer to the following chart, which highlights the differences between the two:

Source evaluation is a critical step in the research process because this process ensures that the sources are credible whether it is a website, a scholarly article, or a newspaper. Though evaluation is a very nuanced and layered concept, you can start by exploring these four areas: 

• Author: The goal here is to establish the author's experience and credentials to write about a given topic. To gather this information, look at other pieces the author has written and what organization he/she works for. 
• Publication: Determine the legitimacy of the source.
  • If the source is a scholarly journal, is the journal peer-reviewed? Do the references cited in the article make sense? 
  • If the source is popular, what is the public perception of the source? Is it well-regarded? 
• Funding: Money can influence what is written about topics, so it is important to investigate for traces of financial influence.  
  • Studies and surveys might have information in sections titled acknowledgements, conflict of interest, and funding.
• Claims: The easiest place is to start with what can be verified (numbers, quotes, facts, statistics, etc.) by either a reference or using external tools like Google and Wikipedia to verify (a process called lateral reading).

The tools below provide more concrete ways to investigate your sources with charts and a video on lateral reading.