Economics Research Guide

The following sites have more information regarding the differences between scholarly and popular sources of information:

These are general criteria for evaluating sources. They can be applied to information that you find in books, magazine and journal articles, and websites.

• Authority
  • Person(s) or organization
  • Background and qualifications
  • Reputation of the author or publisher
    
    
• Purpose
  • Popular or scholarly treatment
    • Level of writing and the intended audience
  • Writing style
    • Informative or persuasive
    • Objective or arguing a side
• Currency
  • Publication date
  • Currency of the references
  • Updates to information found on websites
    
    
• Accuracy
  • Presence of references
  • Peer review system for scholarly literature
  • Quality of writing

For those of you who learn better visually, here are some short (>2 minute) videos about identifying articles and citations.