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• CRITERIA IN EVALUATING SOURCES

  There is always a risk that the sources taken from the Internet or anywhere else have biased or incorrect

  information, so you always have to evaluate and filter your sources before using them. Not only does an incorrect

  source affect your research, it also affects your credibility as a writer.

  The following are some of the criteria for assessing whether a source is suitable to use for academic

  purposes. The criteria include relevance, authority, currency, contents, and location of sources.
• RELEVANCE OF THE SOURCE OF THE RESEARCH TOPIC

  • How well does the source support your topic?

  Key ideas:

  ✓ You can check the title, table of contents, summary/abstract, introduction, or headings of the text

  to have a sense of its content.
• The author's name should be identified
• The author may be a professor in a reputable university
• Author's publications

  • Publications from professors are usually peer-reviewed and have undergone a strenuous publication process and are therefore reliable
• Citations demonstrate that the writer has thoroughly researched the topic and is not plagiarizing the material</b>
• Authority


  The credibility or authenticity of the author or source of information
• Legitimate academic texts must include citations as a requirement for publication</b>
• If the source does not have an author, think twice before using it
• The author's background, education, or training should be related to the topic
• CURRENCY / DATE PUBLICATION

  • What is the date of publication?

  Key ideas:

  ✓ In most fields, the data from older publications may no longer be valid. As much as possible, the

  date of publication should be at most 5 years earlier.
• Bibliography or works cited section


  A list of sources used in the text
• Balanced research


  Using sources with different points of view
• Tone


  The attitude of the author towards his/her subject and writing style
• Personal agenda


  A particular point of view or interest that someone wants to promote
• Colloquial words


  Words or phrases that are used in informal situations
• Style of writing

  The way the text is written
• Author


  The person who wrote the text
• Citations


  References to other sources of information in the text
• Accuracy of information


  How accurate the information is in the text
• Findings


  Results or conclusions of a study or research
• Contracted words


  Words that are shortened by leaving out a sound or letter
• When using digital sources, consider the URL of the website
• In academic writing, reputable sites are those who .edu, .gov, .net, and .org in URL
• If the URL includes the top-level domain .edu, then that means that it has been published by an academic institution such as a university
• Is it a book, an academic journal, or a reputable news source such as www.nytimes.com or www.economist.com?
• Does it provide complete publication information such as author(s) / editor(s), title, date of publication, and publisher?
• When evaluating the location of sources, consider the following:
• Is the source published digitally or in print?
• Common URLs include .gov (government), .org (organizations), .com (commercial sites), and .net (network infrastructures)
• Avoid using blogs or personal home page and wiki sites (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquotes)
• PURPOSE OF CITING SOURCES

  It is important not only to het information from credible sources but also to properly document all borrowed ideas,

  information, concepts, arguments, or information and attribute them to their authors or creators. This is done by citing

  sources. This procedure, which is an integral part of academic and professional writing, serves the following purposes.

  • To give credit to the original author of a work.
  • To promote scholarly writing.
  • To help your target audience identify your original source.
• To give credit to the original author of a work.

  Plagiarism is a serious offense in which someone takes and uses the ideas, information, concepts, arguments,

  or information of someone else, intentionally or unintentionally, without proper citations.
• To promote scholarly writing.

  Scholarly writing means that you are able to exhaustively use related and existing ideas, information,

  concepts, or arguments of an expert and to properly attribute these to the original source.
• To help your target audience identify your original source.

  More often than not, your target audience or readers want to either verify the information or learn more about

  the information from the original source. With your proper citations, your target audience can easily identify

  the location of the original source used in your paper.
• FORMS OF CITATION

  There are various styles or formats used to cite sources, but there are only two forms of citations: in-text and

  reference.

  1. In-text Citation requires the writer to cite the details of the reference used in a certain part of his/her essay. The

  format of in-text citations varies per style.

  Example (APA Style)

  (Cummings et al., 2002)

  2. Reference Citation refers to the complete bibliographic entries of all references used by the writer. This appears

  in the reference list found at the last part of the paper.

  Example (APA Style)
• STYLE GUIDES

  These citations are governed by rules of style and structure, which are generally published as style guides or

  manuals. Some of the widely used style guides are listed below.

  1. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA)

  2. The Modern Language Association Style Guide (MLA)

  3. Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)

  4. American Medical Association Manual of Style (AMA)

  5. The Chicago Manual of Style.
• STYLE GUIDE DISCIPLINE

  APA- Psychology, education, hotel and restaurant management, business, economics, and other social sciences

  MLA- Literature, arts, and humanities

  IEEE- Engineering

  AMA- Medicine, health sciences, and other natural sciences

  CHICAGO- Reference books, non-academic periodicals (e.g, newspapers, magazines, journals, among others)
• A.P. A. STYLE OF CITATION

  The American Psychological Association defines the APA style of citation as a set of guidelinesthatan editor follows

  to certify clear and consistent production of written text. APA is primarily concerned with the uniformity of the

  abbreviations and punctuation used, heading created, statics created, references cited, and other related

  materials.
• INTEXT CITATION:

  • Providethelastnameoftheauthorfollowedbyacomma,thentheyear ofpublication.Example: (Jones,

  2005)

  • Forworkswithtwo authors,putanampersandbetweenthelastnamesof theauthors.Example: (Cook&

  Croft,2015)

  • Forworkswiththree ormore authors,providethenameofthefirstauthor plus"etal." Example: (Chenetal.,

  2008)

  • Whencitingmultipleworks,placethecitationsinalphabeticalorderand insertasemicolonbetweeneach.

  Example: (Chenetal.,2008;Jones, 2005).

  • Includepage number only intherarecasewhereadirectquote(placed inquotationmarks)isused.

  Example:(Jones,2005,p.79)