How to Find and Evaluate Research Sources

In chapter five of Envision you learn how to find and evaluate research sources the right way. The first thing someone must do is construct a list of search terms over his or her topic. It’s important to have quality search terms when looking for sources. By having good search terms you will be able to find the best sources for your topic. Scholars divide research into primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are original texts you analyze in your research paper and secondary sources are sources that provide commentary on your primary material or on your topic in general. Finding primary sources can be difficult but you can find these sources in the library in general stacks, archives, or multimedia collections. It takes time to find sources that will be helpful in writing your paper.

The most important thing a person must do is evaluate your sources. There are millions of different websites and books out there on a certain topic. When looking at websites look for websites that have .ORG or .GOV these sites most the time are quality sites. Look at the layout and how the site looks to you. Most of the time it is pretty easy to tell if some random person made this site or if its a good safe site to use. When looking at academic sources look at the author. Do some information on the author and see what he or she has written. Look at the place of the publication of the book. Also look at the date this book was published to see how current it is. Last, look at the table of contents and index to see if this source will be helpful to you or not. At the end of papers you must have a works cited page. A works cited page is giving credit to the author that wrote the piece. There are different forms like MLA, APA, and Chicago. A works cited page is a must and will keep you out of trouble when it comes to plagiarism.