Evaluating sources within the context of a specific discipline adds more complexity than the criteria introduced in Evaluating Sources Basics. Consider these additional points when considering using a source for a paper or research project.

Your Topic

Think about your topic carefully, and in particular think about the subject area of your class and your project. Consider the points and conclusions that you need to make in your project. Go back to your assignment instructions and reread them. Do the instructions ask you to find sources written for a specific subject audience, such as your course’s academic subject area?

Now, look at an article that you may want to cite in your project. Look at the title of the article, read the abstract (a summary at the beginning) of the article, and then read the summary and/or conclusions of the article. 

• What is the author trying to say, and what are the main points?
• Think about the title of the publication that the article comes from. Is it in your subject area?
• You may also want to look at the subject terms that have been used to tag the article’s topic. Do they look relevant to your topic?
• Ask yourself if the topic of this article is really appropriate for the topic you are researching for your project. Does the author make points and draw conclusions that support the points you want to make in your project?

Authority

Information sources are created and written by authors. Authors can be single researchers, groups of researchers, or the author may be listed as an institution or company. Almost all academic sources are produced by named people. Anonymous sources are almost never academic sources.

Think carefully about the subject area for the class you are taking. Who would be considered an expert by your professor or TA for that subject area? It will most likely be a professor or someone with an advanced degree or deep subject expertise in that specific area of academic research. Go back and reread your assignment instructions. Do the instructions specify that the sources you cite must have been written by experts in a specific academic discipline?

Look carefully at the sources you want to cite in your project. What are the names of the authors that are listed on the sources? It is usually possible to figure out the academic subject area and department or institution that an author is affiliated with.

• Some library databases will tell you the department and institution for an author.
• If you skim through the article PDF, sometimes the department and institution for an author is printed on one of the pages of the article.
• Google is a great way to look up an author. Just google the author’s name, perhaps with another word relevant to the academic subject, such as “Sociology” or “Economist.” If you discover confusing information about an author, ask your professor, the TA, or a librarian for assistance.

Academic Context

As you search in library databases and Google Scholar for sources, you are going to find a wide variety of sources, of many different types. Once again, go back to your assignment instructions and read them carefully. The instructions for many class projects ask you to find specific types of sources.

• Do the assignment instructions say that you need scholarly or peer-reviewed sources?
• Do the instructions say that other kinds of sources like newspaper or online magazine articles are acceptable?

Many article searching databases have filters you can use to identify the specific kinds of sources you may need, such as scholarly or peer-reviewed articles. Please ask a librarian for assistance with the advanced techniques you can use to find the best sources.

Source Age

The age of the source is another aspect to consider when evaluating information you find. Within your discipline, how does the age of the source impact the usefulness of the content and how it is used? In general, research in the sciences tends to change more quickly compared to research in the social sciences and humanities. For example, it might be perfectly acceptable to use an article on the impact of Persian literature from ten years ago, but you would probably not want to use an article on renewable energy sources from ten years ago. However, this is not always the case.

Sometimes you may need an older source in science research if you are researching the history of a topic, such as tracing the history of research on a virus. Conversely, sometimes you may need a very recent source in the humanities, such as new interpretations of a theatrical performance. For your own research, consider these questions:

• Does the age of the source matter?
• What part of the scholarly conversation are you interested in (e.g. only recent research, only historical research), and why?
• Does your assignment have source age guidelines? Check with your instructor if you are unclear. 
• What do you know about your topic that could make a source too old? (e.g. a paradigmatic shift in research that happened 6 years ago)

Once you’ve answered these questions for yourself, you can use this information to filter your search results in the database you’re using. For example, if you’re only interested in the past five years of research on a topic, you can filter your results by publication date.