Justice, Community, and Leadership

This is the recommended first stop for all justice, community and leadership research. Use the left side bar to navigate through helpful tips and the best resources available through the SMC Library, as recommended by your librarian.

Popular and Scholarly Sources

When you are figuring out if a source is popular or scholarly, you are evaluating a source. Scholarly sources are not always "good" and popular sources are not always "bad". Instead, it's how we use the source that determines if it's appropriate for our research. 

Is a source popular or scholarly? Use the chart below to see which characteristics your source most likely matches: 

Specificity Popular: general or specific topics; opinions Popular: General interest topics; news; entertainment Scholarly: Specific or narrow area of research
Author Anyone Journalists or anyone Experts (professors, doctors, faculty, and scholars)
Reading Level  8th grade or lower 8th grade or lower Lots of big words, dense jargon, hard for an outsider to understand
Purpose To inform or share opinions To entertain, to inform, to share an opinion To move the field forward, to gain new understanding of a subject area
How was it edited?  After publication by group editing or by comments Before publication by in-house editors or not edited or fact-checked at all evaluated by experts in a rigorous peer-review process
How are the sources cited? Links to other websites or no citations Sometimes links to other websites, sometimes bibliography Always has a Bibliography 
Examples:  Wikipedia, blogs, comment sections, etc. USA Today, People Magainze, BBC, New York Times, etc. Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of Hydrology, etc.

 

Additional Questions to Ask

Source Type

  • What type of source is this (e.g., article from a journal, magazine, newspaper, website, primary, secondary)?

Currency

  • Does your topic require current information?
  • When was the source published? Is it current for your topic?
  • If it is a website, when was it last updated?
  • If your source cites any other sources, are they recent as well?

Author/sponsorship

  • What are the author's credentials or background in this area?
  • Has the author written other things on the same topic?
  • Does the author OR publisher have financial interest in the topic?
  • Does the author's background/publisher information make the source more or less credible?

Bias

  • Is the information primarily fact or opinion?
  • Does the author present multiple sides (pros & cons) of the issue?
  • Is the information supported by research?
  • Are there citations?
  • Has the author provided sufficient evidence?
  • Based on your response to the above questions, do you think your source is highly biased or minimally biased?

Relevance

  • How do you plan to use this source?
    • As examples...
    • To support a particular point you are making?
    • To explain why your solution is the best option?
    • To explain how your solution works?
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