Literature, Determining Quality of

It is important when determining quality of literature to distinguish among different types of literature. There are significant differences between academic sources like journals, books, and encyclopedia entries, and nonacademic sources like popular press magazines and newspapers. One of the first distinctions to make is the difference between academic and nonacademic sources. Typically, researchers will want to cite academic sources in their research articles because they are more credible than nonacademic sources, which are written for the general public. Gathering and citing information from a peer-reviewed, academic journal for which the researcher has collected data and the resulting article reporting the data has undergone a rigorous review process by one’s peers to ensure that the study is ethical and rigorous is very different ...