Composition

The Student Learning Center (SLC) is a fantastic resource if you need help with anything writing-related. We have several writing tutors who can help you with understanding an assignment, brainstorming, creating a thesis, creating an outline, revising a first draft, proofreading, and more. For more info about the SLC, please visit our Libguide. 

When conducting research for a paper or project, it’s important to carefully evaluate any websites you’re using to gather information on your topic. You will want to use academic sources.

An academic source is a source that has been peer-reviewed by the author’s fellow scholars or experts in the same field. For most research papers, you should only use academic sources (blog posts, for instance, are generally not acceptable for a research paper). 

There are five areas you should focus on when evaluating a source:

• accuracy (i.e., how accurate is the information),
• expertise (i.e., is the author an expert on the subject),
• bias/objectivity (i.e., is the author biased or are they objective),
• date of publication (i.e., is it current), and
• coverage (i.e., is the topic covered thoroughly). 

When presented with a new source here are some steps you can take to dig in deeper:

1. Investigate the source.  Think about the CRAAP test: currency, relavency, authority, accuracy, purpose.  If the sources falls short in one of those areas: 

2. Find other sources.  There are plenty of other places to find information.  Check library databases.  Check reputable news sites. Then: 

3. See if you can trace the information back to the original source.  If you can find a lot of brief articles or blog posts about a topic, but can't find the original source, rethink using it. 

4. Use the keywords in your known sources to find other new works. Think about yourself as a Private Eye!