When you approach a scholarly article, you want to make sure that it will help you answer your research question.
Identify and Read Scholarly SourcesThis guide from the University of Illinois provides a helpful flow chart, video, and infographic to help you navigate scholarly (aka peer reviewed, aka academic) sources.
articles and books that you find on Google Scholar. Most will be fine, but some might not be as scholarly as you think.
For articles:
Search for the TITLE OF THE JOURNAL with the phrase "impact factor." It should come back with a number that is the impact factor (which refers to how much impact the journal has). If the search comes back with any number at all, the article is probably fine.
For books:
Search for the PUBLISHER in Google to determine whether this is an academic publisher. If it's a popular publisher (which means it publishes books for people to read for fun), the book might not be a scholarly source.
Wikipedia will usually give reliable information about whether a publisher is academic or popular.
If you're uncertain about any of this, come to Research Help or ask a question in the Ask Us box on the library homepage!
The best way to evaluate sources you find via Google (or any search engine) is to fact check! This means:
Learn more in the infographic below.
Text description of "SIFT: Evaluate Information in a Digital World" for web accessibility
You can read more about SIFT here on Mike Caulfield's blog.
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