Created by Jackie Stapleton, Liaison Librarian, University of Waterloo; Adapted by Aneta Kwak, Mikayla Redden, Jeff Newman, Liaison Librarians, University of Toronto; Modified by Dylan McGlothlin, Humanities Librarian, Western Michigan University
Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
What we typically think of in academic research: books, journal articles, conference presentations, etc., created by scholars, researchers, and students for each other.
Most sources from academic voices have undergone a process called peer review, where 2 or more experts in the field evaluate the research questions, methodology, findings, conclusions, sources, etc., for quality and originality.
Look to see if there are any conflicts of interest or funding statements.
Magazine and newspaper articles, and videos and social media posts created by international, national, local, regional, or topic-based news networks. These are written by writers and journalists for the general public.
There are many different tools available to evaluate news sources, each with its own strategy for determining bias. Here are a few to check out:
*Bias charts only show the average bias leanings of all the articles, posts, videos, etc. of a news source. They can be helpful to get an idea of how to evaluate a specific article, but the bias will depend on the author and type of article, as well as the news source that published it. For example, letters to the editor, opinion, and guest articles include more of the writer's thoughts and judgments rather than factual statements. The article type may be stated next to the title of the article or the author's name, which could be at the beginning or end of the article.
The voices of those who are being researched; individuals directly affected by your topic.
*Some NGOs are created by and for community members.
Because the goal of finding community voices on your topic is to hear from those directly affected by your equity issue, the main evaluation question to ask of these sources is: Does the person have the identity or experience to be considered a community member?
Non-government organizations (NGOs) are non-profit organizations that operate independently from any government, though they may work alongside government organizations and advocate for policy changes. For example, the American Red Cross, an NGO, often collaborates with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, on disaster relief. NGOs often have a humanitarian, social, or environmental focus. As an organization separate from a government, they can be very focused in their work, collecting and publishing data about the needs of the populations they serve and how their work fulfills those needs.
To simplify the categorization of voice types within the Research Honeycomb, for-profit organizations, like businesses and corporations, are included in this voice type. Though they are also a non-government organization, the label of NGO is typically only used for non-profit organizations. Businesses need data to develop products tailored to their customer base. Some of that information is made public.
*Some NGOs are created by and for community members.
Both types of organizations have reasons for sharing the information they collect: non-profit NGOs want to expand support for a community and convince donors that their work is worthy of financial support, and for-profit businesses want to sell their product and assure shareholders that they have made a good investment. Because of this, the information they publish is presented in a way that supports these goals. This doesn't mean you should avoid using this information in your research. Oftentimes, they are the only ones who publish that specific information because they are the only organizations interested in it! Just consider their data collection methods and how language and data visualizations are being used to support the goals of an organization in your evaluation of the information.
Goals: What is their mission and vision statement? What is their goal? If it's vague, what is implied by the language they use in those statements in the context of the rest of their website? This can be found on their About page, linked at the very top or very bottom of a website.
Who: Who makes up this organization? Is there information about membership or a board of directors? If an organization serves a specific community, are any members of that community involved in leadership? Is there information on who funds their work or who owns the company? This information is on their About, Contact, or Directory page.
Data: Look for a Resources list. How was their data collected? Are they making logical assumptions from that data? If there are any links to other information sources, do they lead to other organizations or stay within that organization's website? Look for information gaps. For example, does a survey of how long it takes Americans to commute to work consider those who use public transportation and rideshares, or only those who own their vehicles?
Outside Views: What do other websites say about this organization? Are there any notable news articles about them? One of the simplest ways to do this is to search the NGO title in Google and browse the News tab.
Information by a local, national, domestic or foreign government.
Stakeholder: an individual or group indirectly affected by the equity issue you are studying.
Ally: an individual or group with similar goals to those who are affected by the equity issue but are not community members.
Check out the other voice types for tips on how to evaluate them.
This module will provide you with tips on how to use Library Search (our library catalog) to find academic sources and evaluate them for reliability and relevance
Unlike Google, which can successfully search for sources when you type a complete sentence, Library Search works best when you only use keywords. For example, if your paper is about whether student athletes should get paid, some keywords would be: college athlete and pay.
Also, Library Search and databases cannot search by item type through the search bar. For example, if you type "book" or "PDF" into Library Search, you will get results that have the words "book" or "PDF" in their title or summary, but not materials with that format. Only search for what an item is about in the Library Search search bar and use the search filters to limit results to a specific item type.
Some words imply different meanings or are only used in certain contexts. For example, searches for "prisoner," "incarcerated," and "justice involved" yield wildly different results.
"Prisoner" is considered in some communities to be an outdated term for describing individuals currently imprisoned. While some of these results are from the past few years, many results are older and focus on re-entry.
"Incarcerated" is a more recent term for those currently imprisoned. Notice how these results are more recent than results using "prisoner" as the search term. Most results talk about the community in terms of how to provide adequate care and services.
*Though it is typically spelled with the hyphen (-), Library Search and most library databases do not accept the symbol or will interpret it as a Boolean Operator (this will be covered in a later section). It is best to leave out any dashes or slashes in your searches.
Click on a result with a title that sounds close to what you are looking for and scroll down to the Subjects. These are words or phrases used to describe this resource and will be related to your search terms. You can also look at the Description for more ideas.
Remember whose view is reflected in this voice type. They are usually professors and scholars who use academic or scientific terminology rather than slang or common language. For example, instead of "teens," they may use "young adult" or "adolescent."
If you're having trouble, use Google to find synonyms or look through a Wikipedia article on your topic to see what language is being used to describe it.
Though there are many types and formats of academic information, we will focus on peer-reviewed journal articles. Peer-reviewed journals are considered the gold standard for academic information and are often required sources for research assignments. This is because these journals publish articles reviewed or refereed by two or more experts in that field of study. If a journal article is peer-reviewed, you can be assured the academic community has confirmed the article investigated a unique topic, applied the appropriate methodology, and cited relevant sources.
To the left of the search results, select the Peer-reviewed Journals search filter to limit results to only peer-reviewed journal articles.
For more information on the peer-review process and how to identify peer-reviewed journal articles, complete the module titled "Peer-Reviewed Journals" in the next tab.
The title will give you a good idea if the full text is relevant to you, though some titles try to be more entertaining than informative. Even if the titles you see in the results of your search do not look relevant, read a few abstracts to develop better keywords and understand how your search worked.
Most journal articles will have a brief summary of their contents. For experiments, it should clearly state their research question, methodology, results, and what they mean. For more theoretical research, it should summarize the main argument, the evidence presented, and what it means for the research field. If this sounds relevant to your topic, keep reading.
The introduction will give the context for the experiment or theoretical argument. It can be a good place to get an overview of the topic within the broader academic literature. This is sometimes called a Literature Review and may have a separate heading. If there is a section that is really relevant to your research, pay attention to what sources are cited there and check out those too. If you've read the introduction and it still sounds relevant to your topic, jump to the conclusion.
For journal articles without clear headings, treat the first 3 paragraphs as the introduction.
The conclusion will bring all the previous information together and summarize the experiment's findings or theoretical argument. For journal articles without clear headings, treat the last 3 paragraphs as the conclusion. If this still sounds relevant to your topic and you need more information, look at the discussion section and any other headings that look relevant.
For journal articles without clear headings, read the first and last sentence of each paragraph to understand how the information is organized and determine which sections are going to be most relevant to you.
It's exactly what it sounds like! Some scholarly publications send articles out to their peers (fellow researchers in their field) to review (check and verify) an article before it is published. This process is sometimes called refereed.
Image created by Tessa Withorn, Carolyn Caffrey, and Dana Ospina at the CSUDH
The peer review process has many flaws, such as publishers exploiting authors and reviewers who are not paid for their work, a lack of transparency that can perpetuate biases and suppress dialogue, and it is a very slow process that can prevent university professors from achieving tenure and promotion.
Peer review perpetuates a cycle of only valuing information deemed acceptable by those in power. The authors and reviewers have had the privilege of access to higher education. Only a few people determine what is being researched and what research is shared and valued.
This does not mean peer-reviewed publications are full of bad information. It is still considered the gold standard of scholarly literature and contains well-researched information. When you are researching, think about what information is being left out of the scholarly conversation and where it might be found.
In Library Search, all peer-reviewed journals are marked with a purple eye and book icon. 
Peer-reviewed journals typically include sections of articles that are not peer-reviewed. These are usually book reviews, news within the field, obituaries, or other general announcements. While these may contain helpful information for you to get started on a search, they are not peer-reviewed and usually not accepted as a source for your research project.
These types of articles are identified by their length and lack of references. If it is only a few pages long and doesn't list any sources for where the authors found their information, it is probably not a peer-reviewed article.
TL;DR The journal can be peer-reviewed, but not all articles within it are peer-reviewed.
Take a guess then highlight the space below each question to see the hidden answer.
Is this article from a peer-reviewed publication?
Yes. It has the peer review icon and following the links to the Author Guidelines page shows that it is a peer-reviewed publication.
Is the article peer-reviewed?
No. It is only a page, does not have references, and looks to be a review of a book.
This module will provide you with tips on how to use our newspaper databases and evaluate them for bias.
Many newspaper databases have a very basic search function similar to "Find in page" (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F), and only look for your exact search terms in the title or full text. Select keywords used to describe your topic as you have seen it appear in news media. If the word for a topic has changed over time or is called something differently according to the news source, try those words to expand your results.
If you're looking for an exact phrase (two or more words that need to be next to each other), use "quotation marks" so that they are not separated in your results. Example search: "student athlete"
This is a comprehensive resource that includes more than 8,000 news publications from nearly 200 countries worldwide, including major national and international newspapers, as well as local and regional titles.
1851 to date. Does not include Crosswords and Times Insider.
HOW TO ACCESS:
FIRST: Register for an Academic Pass.
First time registrants MUST use their @wmich.edu email addresses to register for an Academic Pass. Your Academic Pass is good for 364 days from the date you activate it; after it expires you can re-register using the registration link above for a new pass for 364 days.
NEXT: Log in here with your WMU account.
Mobile APPS: Your Academic Pass includes access to the New York Times via the NYTimes smartphone and tablet apps.; these are included as part of the Academic Pass and are available here.
A U.S. daily financial newspaper that covers news and trends relating to business, industry, finance, the economy, and international commerce. Provides extensive price and other data for securities, commodity, options, futures, foreign exchange, and money markets. Full text from 1984 to Current.
Microfilm: HG 5 on the Lower Level, 2012-2017.
There are many different tools available to evaluate news sources, each with its own strategy for determining bias. Here are a few to check out:
Bias charts only show the average bias leanings of all the articles, posts, videos, etc. of a news source. They can be helpful to get an idea of how to evaluate a specific article, but the bias will depend on the author and type of article, as well as the news source that published it. For example, letters to the editor, opinion, and guest articles include more of the writer's thoughts and judgments rather than factual statements. The article type may be stated next to the title of the article or the author's name, which could be at the beginning or end of the article.
See how bias and fact-checking websites describe the Epoch Times: All Sides, Media Bias/Fact Check, and Ad Fontes Media.
Each source has a slightly different opinion of not only the bias leaning but also the reliability of what The Epoch Times reports. Evaluation is rarely as simple as biased and unbiased. Use all the tools at your disposal to make your decision.
Use these links for the small group activity
Some sources are used to get ideas for keywords or to find even better sources, but they should not be a final stop in your research journey. Here are some examples.