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Practical English - Uresti: Evaluating Sources

Domains

  • .com - Most common domain, it means "commercial" and was originally meant for commercial websites but it is pretty much used by everyone now.
  • .gov - Stands for "government". This domain is used by government websites of all levels. It is used by Federal, State, and local governments.
  • .org - Stands for "organization". This domain can be used by non-profits, business, or clubs. 
  • .edu - Stands for "education". This domain is normally used by schools. Most research is going to be coming out of colleges and universities.
  • .net - Stands for "network". Network is now basically the same as commercial.

Sources

Books - When looking at books look to see who published it. Was it published by a University Press? Or was it published by a popular publisher? Books published by University Press must go through a peer review process before being published. Books from a popular press do not. Also, look and see if there is bibliography in the book letting you know where the author got their information from.

Academic/Scholarly/Peer Reviewed Journal - These are journals go through a Peer Reviewing process before they are published. If anything is wrong with the article it doesn't get published. 

Periodical/Magazine - These are written for a general audience and do not go through a Peer Reviewing process. These are good for finding information on current and popular topics. But if  you are using them as a source you may want to look at the background of the author, see if the author has anything that may make them a more believable source. 

Newspaper - These are written for a general audience on topics concerning local, national, and international news. If you use one of these as a source make sure you are not using an opinion piece. You want to use articles that are not bias, and hopefully give you an idea where they get the facts and figures they write about.

Benefits of Sources

                                                        BENEFITS                                                   DRAWBACKS

Books

·Overview of a topic

·May have table of contents and index

·Information may be outdated- even new books can be outdated because of how long it takes to publish a book.

 

Academic Journals

·More current information than books

·Peer Reviewed

·References

·Language – harder to understand/read because it uses academic terms. These are not written for a general audience

Magazines

·Easy language to read/understand - these are written for a general audience.

·Up to date coverage of news and popular topics

·Shorter articles

·Not peer reviewed

 

Newspapers

· Up to date information

· May have facts and figures

·May be bias

 

Websites

·Easy access to information

·Language – Most websites are written for general audience.

·Anyone can create a website

·Quality of information is not always    good

·Hard to cite – many websites do not have all the required information for citation

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