How to Find Authoritative Web Resources for Scientific Research

Instructify:

The following is a fragment of the original under the title: Beyond Wikipedia: Locating Authoritative Web Resources for Scientific Research, and reproduced under Creative Commons license.

Check Your Sources

Where your information is coming from is the best way to tell if it is valid. While sources with fewer credentials can be right, you have better odds of finding accurate information when facts come from an expert in the field. Reputation is a good indicator of the quality of the information that you can get from a source. If information comes from a well-respected authority in a particular field then it is probably accurate.

Check The Date

Even information from a reliable source can be out of date. While many facts stand the test of time, when it comes to scientific information new research and knowledge often leaves old studies either useless or just not as current as you want your information to be. Many sites can hang around on the internet long after their useful lives so you need to look into this. Information that is a year old may not be of as much help to you as information that is only a month old. Remember that.

Find Collections Of Reliable Sources

Authoritative web resources for scientific research can be found, but you must be careful. Your research is too important to be undermined by utilizing a bad source along the way. Luckily, there are steps you can take. You can check your sources, check the date the site was published or updated, and you can utilize sites like Intute that gather quality sites for you. These are some easy ways to help ensure that every web resource you use will be of the highest quality.

Read complete article by Thomas Rheinecker.

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