Introduction

Find
Articles

Find
Books

Find
Government
Information

Evaluate
Information

Locate a
Journal by Title

Interlibrary
Loan an
Article

Introduction | Types of Articles | Questions to Ask

Introduction

Your job in doing research is not simply finding information, it's finding good information. What constitutes as "good" is of course up to you, but your professor has some specific criteria that you need to take into consideration, namely is it a scholarly, research-based source.

I would suggest asking yourself a series of questions, and I would do this when evaluating any piece of information, whether it is from a book, an article, or information off the Web. 

Who wrote it? Is that person(s) an expert in the field?

Scholarly articles will be written by professors or researchers.

Who is it aimed at? Is it aimed at criminal justice academics, or law enforcement personnel?

Scholarly articles will be aimed at academics, though law enforcement personnel will find them beneficial.

What is the article about?

• Is it clearly a rigorous study, with details on how the author went about doing the research, the methodology, etc.?

• Is it a comprehensive analysis and review of research done by others on an issue?

• Or is it more of an anecdotal article about "best practices" or "how we solved this problem in our department?"

Scholarly articles will be the first (a research article) or the second (a review article). The third type of articles are prevalent in trade magazines. They may be useful from a practical standpoint, but aren't scholarly.

Are there references? If yes, how many and what kind of sources are being referenced?

Scholarly articles will have several references, and they will be primarily from other journals and not magazines or websites.

Types of Articles

One very important when evaluating an article is what kind of article it is. Periodicals take many forms.

Scholarly

A journal is the name given a periodical that is scholarly in nature. Articles are written by researchers or academics and should offer citations to sources consulted. How a particular article winds up in the journal depends on the kind of journal it is. The issues range from weekly to annually.

• A peer-reviewed journal, sometimes called a refereed journal, accepts manuscripts and farms them out to other experts in the field to judge the article, usually without the name of the author. The article is then critiqued and is either accepted, sent back to the author for revisions, or outright rejected.
• Other journals do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, rather they recruit particular individuals and ask them to contribute an article. So while this type of journal isn't peer-reviewed, it is very selective and just as prestigious to be published in.
• And some journals aren't quite as rigorous as the two above. The works are scholarly, but article proposals are judged in-house by the editor or the editorial board, rather than peer-reviewed.

Most journals will tell you straight out if they are peer-reviewed or not in the description of its scope, in print near where the journal lists the editor/editorial board, or find the journal's website and look in the "about us" or "submission guidelines" section. Otherwise you can consult a reference set called Ulrich's Periodical Directory. (The database Academic Search Premier has information about the 3,200 periodicals it covers. Just click on the green button Publications, type in the name of the periodical, then the link detailed information.)

The articles within scholarly journals fall into three main categories. 

• Research articles are ones that describe the results of original research performed on an issue, either a study or trial or survey conducted. The research article should be composed of an introduction, literature review (a summary of other research that has been done on the issue), methodology, results, and conclusion. 
• Review articles are ones that summarize lots of studies done on an issue and analyzes them.
• And most journals also offer commentary or opinion pieces as well. These are usually written by the editor or solicited from an individual. 

Non-scholarly

• Newspapers usually offer articles that are factual accounts of events. But the articles can be an analysis of trends, issues, or opinions by a particular person or the newspaper's editorial board as well. Newspaper articles usually aren't written by experts in the field and don't offer suggested readings or sources of where they got their information. Newspaper articles are great for current events and primary source material. The issues are usually daily or weekly.
• Popular magazines are the least scholarly and are mainly for entertainment. Articles tend to offer general tips or advice, interviews with celebrities, and lots of photographs or illustrations. The issues are usually weekly or monthly.  
  Examples: Good Housekeeping, GQ, People, Road & Track, Vogue, etc. 
• Trade magazines are those published by associations and/or aimed at practitioners in a particular field, offering mainly practical, how-to articles, or news useful to the field. If the magazine looks like it might be scholarly, but the articles within are clearly not, then it's probably a trade magazine. The issues are usually weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
  Examples: Police Chief, Corrections Today, etc. 
• News magazines are more similar to newspapers, in that they offer factual information on current events or news, or analysis of events, or editorials/opinions on news events. The issues are usually weekly or monthly.
  Examples: Economist, Maclean's, Newsweek, Time, etc. 
• Opinion magazines only offer analysis of issues and trends, sometimes with a political agenda. The issues are usually weekly or monthly.
  Examples: American Spectator, Christianity Today, The Nation, National Review, New Republic, etc.

Websites

A lot of times the concept of evaluating information comes up in conjunction with using the Internet and websites as sources, for a very good reason. There's no editorial control to putting up a website. By website I mean information freely accessed by anyone and not related to traditional print publications. The Internet is used as a method of transmitting paid for information, such as the library databases and e-journals. Or publishers use their websites as "teasers" and reprint articles published in hardcopy. And the federal and state government agencies are using the Internet instead of printing the information they want to disseminate to the public. Those kinds of information should be thought of as more like articles, something that did go through an editorial process.

Anyone can sign up for a free website from a number of companies and write whatever they feel like. Or if they are willing to pay more, they can buy a domain name and call themselves whatever.com or whatever.org, and write whatever they feel like. But mixed in with personal homepages of dubious quality are excellent sources of information, so one wouldn't want to dismiss the Web entirely. 

Questions to Ask

Beyond the questions above, here are some questions you should mull over as you are evaluating your sources. 

Audience

Who is the intended audience of the information? The general public, a more educated or attuned segment of the general public, or specialists in the field?

Articles are usually judged by the content of the article itself or the reputation of the periodical. Definitely note whether the periodical is scholarly or not.

For websites, you'll just have the website itself to judge. If there's lots of jargon with no explanation, then you aren't the target audience. But then the more research you do on the subject, the more you'll be "in the know" and your expectations will change. 

Authority

Who wrote the information? Why did they write it? What are their credentials? How many other things have they written? Who published/sponsored it? What's the criteria for them publishing/sponsoring a work? 

Articles

Scholarly articles always list the authors. They will include the institution the author worked for (at the time of publication), and recently they usually include an email address for contact information.

Why they wrote it could be trickier, since they may or may not include intent in the introduction. Though if it is a scholarly article, they should have a research statement.

To see what other scholarly articles the author has written, try searching Criminal Justice Abstracts, since that is the most comprehensive database we have for criminal justice issues.

Most magazines and newspapers offer bylines, with a few noteworthy exceptions such as The Economist. Magazines and newspapers usually just list the name, unless the author doesn't work for them, i.e. a guest editorial or columnist. For non-scholarly magazines and newspapers, you should judge the authority of the magazine or newspaper as a whole, rather than the author.

To find out more about the periodical, look in the beginning or the back for a list of editors, submission requirements, etc. If you don't have access to the physical periodical, check the periodical's website. For general information about a periodical, consult Ulrich's Periodical Directory. It lists the type of publication it is, its circulation, contact information, etc. For those periodicals covered in Academic Search Elite, they offer information about the periodical (publisher, website, cost, whether it's peer-reviewed, etc.). Just click on the green button Publications.

Website

Hopefully the website will have the name of the author and contact information. They may or may not have biographical information on the site. If there is no author, then hopefully it is clearly sponsored by an organization, and bylines aren't as important, similar to articles.

Intent will have to be judged by the content. But since they are putting this information up for free, there's got to be a reason for them doing it. Think about why did the writer spend this much time putting the website together. What's in it for them?

• For commercial enterprises, they bothered because they want to sell you something, or they want to attract your attention to bring in advertising revenue. 
• For mainstream newspapers, they are already set up to make money via advertising, and the subscription money may be minor to begin with. So assuming that it's cheaper to put the content online instead of printing, they may be able to afford to offer free content. Most usually only offer for free the last week or two, and then have a searchable archive where they charge per article.
• For mainstream news/opinion/popular magazines, they bothered because they want you to buy a subscription. To that end they may offer the current issue's content free, or selected articles from recent issues, as a teaser. 
• For federal and state government agencies, they have a legal mandate to disseminate information gathered via tax dollars back to the public. So the Internet is seen as a cheaper method of dissemination than print.
• For nonprofit organizations, they want to "get the word out" about their cause, so the Internet is a perfect medium to distribute their own reports.
• Scholarly information generated by academics can be found, but we are still in the infancy of the Internet being used for this. A lot will depend on how tenure review committees look on that kind of publishing. Just putting your scholarship up on the Web isn't going to be looked on favorably, because of the lack of peer-review. There have been a number of big pushes to have more e-journals available freely online, to counteract the costs of scholarly journals, especially in the sciences. (See the Public Library of Science, arxiv.org, and PubMed Central. For more information about these types of projects, see SPARC: The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.)

In general, if the website wants to be taken seriously, it will list credentials for the author or information about the organization, usually listed as About Us or About the Author. If you can't find who wrote/sponsored it, then I would dismiss the site.

Bias

Is the information presented objectively? Are the opinions balanced, or does the author have an agenda?

As any social scientist will tell you, true objectivity is a myth. Of course some works are clearly more biased than others. But the biases aren't always obvious. It may be in omitting one or another side that the author expresses biases. If the author wants to at least have the air of being objective, then it should acknowledge different viewpoints. But just because there is an agenda to the piece doesn't mean you should dismiss it. It will simply require finding other sources to discuss other sides to the issue, assuming you want any.

Credibility

Does the information seem credible? Does the author give sources or suggestions for further reading for the information? How comprehensive is the source list? What type of sources did the author use? If some of the other sources are websites, do the links work?

Credibility will have to be judged by what you find out in all your research. But definitely note the sources and suggestions for further reading in the scholarly pieces you find. If all the sources are one type (say non-scholarly for a supposed scholarly piece) or rather old, this may be important. Sources on a website that are links are very easy to check out, given the medium. 

Websites

There's an interesting trick you can do to see who thinks highly of a particular website. Because of the interconnectedness of the medium, you can actually do a search in Google and other search engines to see who's linking to a particular site. So if you are skeptical about the credibility of a particular source, you can see perhaps what other organizations really like it, and gain some insight that way.

To do this in Google, go to the Advanced Search page, scroll down a bit and under the Page-Specific Search section, type in the URL in the box labeled Links.

Factual

If facts or statistics are presented, are they accurate? 

Try verifying the facts with another source. I know, sounds like a pain, but if a particular statistic is important to your hypothesis, it would be worth verifying. Some facts are pretty easy to verify with online sources, such as population, capitals, etc. And a lot of times in non-scholarly sources, they don't give complete citations of where they got their information. Instead they say "a report issued by such and such agency today stated..."

Up to Date

Is the information current? 

Whether it is important that the information is current depends on the issue. Certainly for some issues such as law it is critical. You should always note the date of the information and the dates of the references.

On websites, it is standard practice to put a "last updated" date stamp, but not everyone does, making it rather hard to judge the currency of the information. Links that no longer work may be a sign of abandonment of the website by the author.

Appearance?

Another category that comes up a lot when evaluating websites is appearance. How does the website look, can you navigate it easily, are there any typos, etc. Personally, I'm not sure exactly how crucial the look or navigation is to judging the content of a site. Certainly one would question a site with glaring typos or grammatical errors, as this is a sign that the author didn't put that much thought into it. But not everyone has a graphical artist's sense of style, and there are plenty of very useful websites out there that are a pain to navigate. 

In terms of periodicals, appearance is how one first judges what kind of periodical it is. A popular magazine looks very different compared to a scholarly journal -- the magazine is eye-catching, glossy, and usually chocked full of ads. Journals are dull, boring, have few to no pictures, and usually have few ads if any. One of the problems with articles from full text databases is that you lose the context of the periodical as a whole. Not seeing where the article came from makes it more difficult to judge sometimes.