Evaluate Information Sources In Research

We going to talk about why is important to evaluate research information sources in our work. Is very important to evaluate that is making the research clear to know; where, who, and why about any things.

Criteria used to evaluate print and Internet information resources, differences between print and Internet resources, characteristics of scholarly vs. popular periodicals, and the scholarly publication cycle. Evaluating information sources is an important part of the research process. Not all information is reliable or true, nor will all information be suitable for your paper or project. Print and Internet sources vary widely in their authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage. Users must be able to critically evaluate the appropriateness

World Wide Web

Print Sources

Quality standards of printed materials are controlled through a system of checks and balances imposed by peer review, editors, publishers, and librarians, all of whom manage and control access to printed information. This assures that published materials have been through some form of critical review and evaluation, preventing informal, poorly designed, difficult-to-use and otherwise problematic materials from getting into the hands of users.

In academic and other research libraries, most books and periodicals are a product of the scholarly communication system. This system ensures that author’s present information in an orderly and logical manner appropriate to the topic. Printed information in books and periodicals follows established linear formats for logical and effective organization.

Materials in printed form are stable. Once in print, information remains fixed for all time. New editions and revisions often are published, but these are separate and distinct physical entities that can be placed side by side with the

Web pages exhibit fewer clues regarding their origins and authoritativeness than print sources. Important information, such as dates, author(s), and references are not always easy to locate. While a reader can easily note this information in a book or periodical article, the web user must often search through several pages, if the information is provided at all. Internet sources are also not stable. Web documents can be changed easily. And once changed, the original is gone forever unless a specific effort is made to preserve it. In fact, many Web documents are intentionally designed to change as necessary, and with automatic changes as with manual changes, the original disappears.

Web resources use hypertext links and need not be organized in any linear fashion. One can easily be led astray and distracted from the topic at hand. But, of course, one can also be led to additional information of value. The changing nature of the web and web documents create major problems with the stability of information and with links between different units of information. Dead or broken and links on the Web are common and others just disappear or are not updated. See Online Subscription Databases vs. Web Sites to learn how to quickly differentiate between subscription (library-selected) and Internet