Use these guidelines to help you assess sources:

Relevance. How closely related is the source to the topic?

Level of specialization and audience. General sources can be helpful to clarify a topic for an audience that is less familiar with it. The authority or currency of more specialized sources may be useful to argue a specific point, but extremely specialized works may be hard for non-experts to understand. Who was the source originally written for—the general public? experts in the field? advocates or opponents? How does this fit with the audience for the research project that cites the source?

Credentials of the publisher or sponsor. What can you learn about the publisher or sponsor of the source? For example, is it a major newspaper known for integrity in reporting, or is it a tabloid? Is it a popular source, or is it sponsored by a professional or governmental organization or academic institution? If the source is a book, is the publisher one you recognize or can find described on its own website?

Credentials of the author. Note names that come up from one source to another, since these references may indicate that the author is influential in the field. An author’s credentials may also be presented in the article, book, or Web site, or you can search the Internet for information about the author. In U.S. academic writing, experts and those with significant experience in a field have more authority on the subject than others.

Date of print publication. Recent sources are often more useful than older ones, particularly in the sciences or other fields that change rapidly. However, in some fields—such as the humanities—the most authoritative works may be older ones.

Date of online publication. Websites with recent updates may be more reliable than those without, but publication dates online can sometimes be difficult to pin down. Even for sites that include dates of posting, remember that the material posted may have been composed some time earlier.

Accuracy of the source. How accurate and complete is the information in the source? How thorough is the bibliography or list of works cited that accompanies the source? Can you find other sources that corroborate what your source is saying?

Stance of the source. Identify the source’s point of view or rhetorical stance, and scrutinize it carefully. Does the source present facts, or does it interpret or evaluate them? If it presents facts, what is included and what is omitted, and why? If it interprets or evaluates information that is not disputed, the source’s stance may be obvious, but at other times, you will need to think carefully about the source’s goals. What does the author or sponsoring group want? to convince you of an idea? sell you something? call you to some action?