With a background in Education and Psychology conducting
research using scholarly resources is a practice I know well. The setup of the Hunt Library online makes it
easy to access the information needed for research. There are many options to help narrow down a
search to exactly what type a resource you are looking for. Typically the types of resources needed are
scholarly.
What makes a resource scholarly is the fact that it is peer
reviewed. When an article is presented
for publication others within the field (peers) are given the task of reading
through it to make sure it upholds the standards of the field. Peer reviews basically serve as a check and
balance system to make sure papers that are published are accurate and are of
high quality of work within a field.
This in turn gives the articles a certain amount of credibility. One person publishing a paper on a subject
without any feedback could seem more like opinion, but when a group within the
field has reviewed it and have held it up against the standards set the content
has more merit to it.
Why use scholarly references over say a Google search?
Google simply searches the Internet, a large database, for results that match
the criteria typed. This can yield results
of any type, from webpages to paid advertisements. There is often very little evidence to show a
user how accurate the information within the search might be. Almost anyone can make a website about almost
any subject, does that mean the information on that webpage is true just simply
because it is on “the web”? The answer is NO!
I’m not saying that nothing on the Internet can be trusted, just that
without knowing the source and background of the author information could be
misleading. There are good resources
located on the Internet and through a Google search, however the user must be
aware of the ones that are not.
When writing a research paper one must be aware of where their
information is coming from. The most
trusted sources of information are those that are scholarly or peer reviewed and
accepted. A quick search of the Internet
can result in multiple “hits” on a subject and some may be accurate and reliable,
some may not.
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