FA 107: The Creative Process in Visual Art (Wallenfels): Evaluating Sources

When you find information sources, consider the following questions to determine if the source is something that you would use for an assignment:

Who wrote this source?  What is their background or expertise in this area?

What is the content of the source? Is it relevant or useful to you? Is it credible? Does it include a bibliography or citations to help you track down where the author found their information?

When was the source published?

Where was the source published? Does that source use a review process (such as peer review or editing)? 

Why was the source published? What is its purpose?

Overall: What is your thinking about this source? Is this useful to you? Would you cite it in a paper?

Peer Review = a process used by many scholarly/academic journals, where potential articles are reviewed by experts in the field (peers) who evaluate the quality of the research and writing in order to recommend whether the article should be published in the journal.

Edited publications = include sources such as newspapers, magazines, books, and book chapters, where editors employed by that publication review the grammar, language, style, and accuracy of the text before it is published.