Women in American History

You need to ensure that you're using the highest quality sources of information for your academic work. As you gather information for your research project, you'll look at many different sources: books, articles from databases, Web documents, interviews, videos, and more.

You can feel pretty confident that books you get from the library and articles you find in the library's research databases are reliable and credible because you know those have gone through a traditional editorial process; someone or some group has checked all the facts and arguments the author made and then deemed them suitable for publishing. You still have to think about whether or not the book or article is current and suitable for your project but you can feel confident that it is a credible, reliable source.

When you use sources from the Web there often is no editor. It is your job, then, to evaluate those Web sources to make sure they are reliable and useful. Remember, the first source that comes on from your search is not necessarily the best source to use for your research. It is up to you to be a knowledgeable consumer of information.

By choosing the right source for your assignment you ensure that you are searching in the right place for relevant, reliable information that meets your instructor's expectations and fulfills your assignment requirements.

Some thoughts to consider are:

• Does the source meet the requirements of my assignment?
• Is the source appropriate for college-level work?
• Is the author an expert?
• Is the source relevant to my research focus?
• Does the source give me enough information to help me understand my topic better?

Before you jump into hunting and gathering your information, be sure you know how not to be fooled by unreliable, false, or misleading information. It's not hard if you train yourself to ask some simple questions that will help you explain why a particular source is reliable and a good fit for your research project.

When you encounter any kind of source, consider... (CRAAP Test)

1. Currency - When was it written? Has it been updated?
2. Relevance - How is it relevant to your research? What is its scope?
3. Authority - Who is the author? What is their point of view? 
4. Accuracy - Has the source been reviewed? Did they cite their sources? Who did they cite?
5. Purpose - Why was the source created? Who is the intended audience? Where was it published? In what medium?

For an in-depth guide to the CRAAP test, see our research guide, Evaluating Sources.

Evaluating AI Content:

• Verify everything: AI output can sound confident, but these tools can make up (“hallucinate”) or misrepresent information, draw false conclusions, make major mistakes and generate fake sources 
• AI doesn’t “understand” the way humans do; these models lack real-world experience and context, so they don’t easily handle irony, humor and complex metaphors 
• Don’t just read AI-generated summaries; take time to read original articles and understand detailed points and context 
• Be aware that many of today’s AI tools are trained on information up to a certain date and may not have access to recent events or new discoveries 
• Challenge AI responses and require the AI to justify its output by citing sources and data 
• Beware of biased AI output 
• Guard against overreliance on AI; challenge yourself to learn and exercise your mental muscles

Finding Information to Help You Evaluate

To find out more about an author: 

Google the author's name or dig deeper in the library's biographical databases.

To find scholarly sources: 

When searching library article databases, look for a checkbox to narrow your results to Scholarly, Peer Reviewed or Peer Refereed publications.

To evaluate a source's critical reception: 

Check in the library's article databases to find reviews of the source in order to get a sense of how it was received in the popular and scholarly press.

To evaluate internet sources: 

The internet is a great place to find both scholarly and popular sources, but it's especially important to ask questions about authorship and publication when you're evaluating online resources. If it's unclear who exactly created or published certain works online, look for About pages on the site for more information about the authorship, or search for exact quotations from the text in Google (using quotation marks) to see if you can find other places where the work has been published.

To see what others say about your source, use lateral reading:

While applying the CRAAP Test to a website, that site isn't always the best place to answer questions concerning authority, accuracy, and point of view about itself. You can not always trust what an author or organization says about themselves, and there are sites that may look very professional and credible that are actually promoting a certain agenda or viewpoint. 

If you are unfamiliar with a online source, it is good practice to open a new tab and perform a search on the author and/or organization providing the source. This process is called Lateral Reading. In addition to reading "down" the webpage in order to evaluate it, you open additional tabs and read "across" multiple pages to determine what others are saying about your potential source. This helps you build the body of evidence needed to determine if the source is suitable for your research need or not.

Watch the brief video below to see how this works.