Skip to Main Content

Social Work Guide

This guide includes scholarly articles, policy resources, and evidence-based practice tools to support social work education and community engagement.

Scholarly, Credible, & Popular Sources

When you need to use outside sources for assignments, your instructors will usually asks for either credible or scholarly sources. To quickly and easily find these, you need to first learn what they are and where you can search for them.

Credible vs Scholarly Sources

Credible

Scholarly
  • Present knowledge as truth with one perspective on a topic
  • Written by journalists, professionals, observers, for the general public or other professionals
  • Usually cite or use other credible sources
  • Don’t always acknowledge the ongoing conversation surrounding the issue
  • Participate in a larger, ongoing conversation on the topic 
  • Written for scholars by scholars
  • Engage with, cite, and build upon credible sources
  • Acknowledge multiple points-of-view or other ways of looking at the topic or issue

While any source can be credible these options are safest:

  • Well-established newspapers and magazines (not the opinion sections): New York Times, Time, Newsweek,
  • Scholarly journals and books
  • Government and (most) university websites
  • Professional organization website or magazine
  • Tertiary sources: Textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries

These are typically the hallmarks of a scholarly source:

  • Scholarly/academic journal articles
  • Books published by a university or academic publisher

Note: Many faculty and research groups have websites or scholarly social media profiles (like Research Gate). These are not peer-reviewed but can be a place to locate citations for scholarly sources.

What determines credibility?

It is important to evaluate a source by both fact checking the source and critically assessing the information source itself to understand the purpose, relevance, objectivity, verifiability, expertise, and newness of the information and its creator. The credibility of a source depends on multiple factors:

  • The context in which it was created 
  • The expertise of the creator 
  • Its objectivity 
  • The accuracy and completeness of the information
  • Whether the information is current and up-to-date
  • How the source will be used

 

How to Know if a Source is Scholarly

  • Evaluate your source using the P.R.O.V.E.N. Method
  • A book should be published by a university press or academic publisher
  • Article publication or source should be listed as scholarly or professional/trade in a database
  • Check websites for the author or organization affiliation
  • When in doubt, Ask a Librarian!

Using Other Sources & Tools to Fact-Check a Source

The strategies listed below come from Mike Caulfield's free online book, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (2017), which provides step-by-step instructions for fact checking.

Check for previous work

Find the original source

  • Who originally published the information and why? Find the original source of the information and get to the bottom of where a claim came from.

Read laterally

  • What do other sources say about this publication and author? A source may present itself as credible even if it is not trustworthy.

Circle back

  • How can you revise your search to yield better results? Use what you’ve learned to start over with new search terms.

Check your own bias

  • Be aware of your own biases and perceptions as you fact check. We are more likely to believe something that brings up emotions or that confirm our existing beliefs. 

 

Sources to Avoid

Not all sources are reliable or appropriate for academic research. Be cautious of materials that exhibit the following characteristics, as these may be neither scholarly nor credible:

  • No identifiable author or publication date
    Reliable sources typically provide clear authorship and date of publication.
  • Content aggregated from other outlets (e.g. newswire or wirefeed stories)
    These sources often lack original reporting or in-depth analysis. View the AllSides News Aggregator Bias Chart.
  • Websites or magazines focused on entertainment or consumer appeal 
    Examples include People, Glamour, or BuzzFeed.
  • Materials written for K-12 audience
    These sources may oversimplify complex topics and are not suitable for academic research.
  • Sources with a strong political or ideological bias
    Be mindful of one-sided perspectives. Refer to the Media Bias Chart for guidance on identifying biased sources.