Starting Your Research - Augustana Library

For academic assignments, you might be asked to use "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" sources. Determining whether an article is peer reviewed can help you evaluate it. To learn about the peer review process, watch the video below.

To determine whether a journal is peer reviewed, search for it in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory and look for the little referee symbol: . 

How do you determine whether an information source is appropriate for your needs, especially if the source isn't peer reviewed? The steps below can help.

Find out who is responsible for the information and determine whether you can trust them.

The video below explains how you can learn more about the author or organization behind a work. The video focuses on news, but this process works for many different types of information sources.

Trace any claims back to their original context.

This can involve looking for references or links to other information sources and then checking whether the evidence matches the claims made in the source you're evaluating. The video below shows an example of how this can work.