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Strategies for Evaluating Sources

Who wrote it?
- Are they an expert?
- What are their credentials?
- What institution are they affiliated with?
Who was it written for?
- For a general audience?
- For an audience of scholars?
- For a professional audience?
When was it written?
- How recently?
- If your topic is a pollution event, how long between the time of the event and when the article was written?
Why was it written?
- What is the author's motive in writing the article?
- To inform, sell, entertain?
- If your topic is a pollution event, to make the polluter look good or bad?
What is the hypothesis?
- Is the hypothesis something that can be proven or disproven using observation and deduction?
- Does this topic even lend itself to scientific study?
What methods were used?
- Did the researchers test for only one experimental variable at a time?
- Did the researchers have a control group?
- Did the researchers control for all the variables so that it's possible to be sure the results were as a consequence of the variables the researchers pinpointed?
- Was it a double blind test?
If you're comparing two statistics, are they measuring the same thing?
- Are they using the same methods and instruments?
- Are they defining that thing in the same way?

ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Contains journal articles and book chapters in the areas of Physical Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences and Social Sciences.
Environment Complete This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary scholarly, government and general interest titles focused on human impact of the environment. Provides indexing, abstracts and full-text for open access articles.
Springer Link This link opens in a new window
Contains journals and books on a broad range of topics.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary scholarly, government and general interest titles focused on human impact of the environment. Provides indexing, abstracts and full-text for open access articles.
Biological Science Collection This link opens in a new window
This database provides full-text access to the extensive variety of biology’s cutting edge research, with applications to medicine, technology and the environment.

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Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Full text of over 100 reference books on all subjects.