Gingrich Library: Your Success Is Why We're Here!
What are scholarly or academic sources?
When your professor requires you to use scholarly sources, typically that means academic books and articles from scholarly journals.
A quick way to tell if a source is scholarly is to look for a works cited list or bibliography in which the author refers to the work of other researchers.
What is Peer-Reviewed?
Some scholarly articles are called peer-reviewed as they are critically evaluated for originality, quality of research, and clarity of presentation by the author's peers (experts who do research in the same field).
Why not use Wikipedia or Google?
Wikipedia is popular, but not a credible source because anyone is allowed to contribute to it.
Google is a search engine and can find all kinds of information on the internet. However, anyone can make a website and the information is not necessarily authoritative or scholarly.
Why use books? Why use articles?
Books can be a treasure chest of information that may not be available in any other resource, especially when looking at the historical treatment of a topic. Most SCHOLARLY books also provide extensive bibliographies, directing you to other books, articles, and various other types of sources that can be very useful to your research.
Articles Articles are crucial for SCHOLARLY communication and have a narrow scope as the information is focused on a topic . SCHOLARLY articles tend to begin with an abstract which is an overview of the article. Titles can be misleading, so it is best to read the abstract to learn what the article is about. They are typically lengthy and have a thorough bibliography.
Research. What does it mean?
Research means to INVESTIGATE. Research involves posing an original question, looking at something from all angles, studying it carefully, and examining it very deeply.
