For your work to meet a high standard you need to be able to support your argument with trustworthy, high-quality sources. When conducting your research, it’s important to evaluate the information sources you find for credibility, reliability, and impartiality. In this section, we'll introduce techniques to help you evaluate your resources.
A simple way to evaluate the sources you have found is to determine if they pass the "CRAAP" test:
| Currency | When was the information published, revised, posted, or updated? |
| Relevancy | Does the information relate to your topic, or answer the question? |
| Authority | Who is the source? What are their credentials? |
| Accuracy | Is the information provided supported by evidence, statistics, etc? Can these be easily verified? |
| Purpose | What's the purpose of the information? For example, to educate, to sell, to entertain? |
Remember:
Evaluating sources effectively is a skill and will develop over time.
Peer-review
Peer-review is a rigorous vetting process that ensures articles submitted to an academic journal are fact-checked by several authoritative experts in that subject. Therefore, peer-reviewed journal articles are more likely to be credible and accurate.
Most academic journal articles you find through Library Search have gone through a peer-review process. You can apply a peer-review filter to your search in Library Search, to make it easier to access these texts.
Avoiding poor quality, predatory journals
Whilst many journals are peer-reviewed and have undergone robust quality checks, this is not the case for all journals, even if they appear scholarly.
Predatory journals prioritise profit over providing reliable information and will publish articles for a fee without providing peer-review or editing services (even though they may claim to).
Journals from large, recognisable publishers (e.g. Routledge, University Presses, Sage, Taylor and Francis, etc) are not predatory and undergo peer-review.
Predatory journals tend to be open access (freely available to all). Many open access journals are high quality and contain peer-reviewed articles, but a small few are predatory. If you come across a journal you are unsure about, you can check the name on the directory of open access journals (DOAJ) to verify its authenticity.
Further Support:
For more support on developing your evaluation skills, see the Critical Thinking guidance on Skills Hub.