For your speech, poster, term paper or senior thesis, you will be expected to discover and integrate information that you have not created yourself. Some types of information have more credibility than others, but most types can have some degree of value to your assignment. Check with your instructor or advisor or ask a librarian for assistance.
Primary literature in scholarly journals has been put through a rigorous evaluation process (peer-review) to ensure that authors follow standard practices, make reasonable assumptions, and create new and significant knowledge.
Recent review articles can be especially helpful because they discover and evaluate the primary literature on specific topics.
Finally, certain journals, such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and New England journal of medicine, are the most prestigious of all scientific journals, because they publish cutting-edge research.
- Preprints or conference papers contain very new research results that may not have been put through the peer-review process.
The following information types are not considered primary literature in most scientific fields.
Books, especially scholarly monographs, summarize developments in a field several years after they have been documented in journal articles.
Statistics and data are only as credible as their sources. They can be central to a research project or can provide bolstering support for a conclusion. All data (and all statistics) are not equal.
White papers and position papers, less common in scientific fields, are also information types that have to be carefully evaluated for the potential bias of their sources. These resources can be valuable to portray opposing points of view on social issues.
- Popular periodicals, newspapers and magazines do not include articles considered to be scientifically credible. Instead, they record events and capture the spirit of public opinion and interests. You will not find sections on methods or literature surveys demonstrating that research is both replicable and significant.
Is there a life cycle of information that affects its credibility with scientists and social scientists?
Currency is a driving factor in science. Years ago only publication in journals would meet the needs for currency and for peer validation. Currency continues to be valued in science, and peer-reviewed articles in many fields still reach their broadest audience in journals, electronic and (later published) print.
Listservs and servers hosting article or conference paper preprints now are important in some fields for their timeliness, although their contents may not be validated.
- Scholarly monographs, encyclopedias, and data collections have become even less credible because they contain information that is obsolete by the day of publication.
And what about the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW)? It is a medium with no inherent level of quality.
It is your responsibility to validate each site you want to use in your assignment.
- Look for currency, credibility of author or sponsoring organization, balance, thoroughness, organization and understandability of text and graphics