Finding Reliable Resources For Academic Purposes

A small warm up 

    If anybody come across to read this , would wonder what is the connection of the blog topic and the term 'Neuroplasticity ' I have mentioned here. Before stepping into the main topic, I thought of sharing a crunch of psychological information we owe which enable us to reorganize. Though we argue that one cannot switch from one procedure to another, that possibility is created within us biologically. Therefore adjusting to a new method is not impossible though have to struggle bit hard in the beginning. 

 'Neuroplasticity'' has become a much popular topic in modern psychology which was first observed by Jerzi Konorski and deeply experimented by a neuroscientist called Paul Batch-y-Rita.

 It refers to the ability of the brain to reorganize its function and structure in order to respond to the external or internal stimulus. 

Therefore neuroplasticity is crucial for students to reorganize their brains in order to accommodate with daunting and confusing concepts. I am sure seeking reliable resources as undergraduates for your academics also definitely makes you boring and confused. Therefore I thought of sharing how I manage to seek credible information through reliable resources.

Content 

• Introduction
• What are reliable resources?
• Why do we need to refer reliable resources?
• Types of information resources
• Primary resources
• secondary resources
• Scientific methods to find reliable resources (CRAAP) 
• High credible resources
• Scholarly articles
• Academic books
• Digital libraries
• Open library
• Project Gutenberg
• Internet Archive
• Wiley online library
• World digital library
• Government reports
• Documents released from reputed organizations
• Academic search engines
• Varied quality documents
• Conduct attentive reading in order to achieve targets (QOOORRR)
• Kinds of resources to avoid

A guidance for finding reliable resources for academic purposes

What would come to your mind if you can recall your memory several years backwards, where you studied in a school as a student on how your learning was conducted,? Undoubtedly your visual memory will come across bulks of text book and notes provided by teachers during their teachings. In contrast within your undergraduate life,  this scenario has turned the other way round, where we have moved from teacher centered education towards student – centered since in university life we are trained not to accept facts blindly but always tactfully with proven evidence. Therefore the student has to explore for information carefully and independently.  Unlike decades back, modern students have a vast area of opportunities to gather information thanks to the new technology.

What are Reliable Resources?

Whether is it a local or international graduate program, furthermore, a physical or online program students need to engage a lot in seeking for information related to their subject because those data will be the basement of their learning outcome?  Now one would think “what are reliable resources and what the difference it creates is? ” Simply the answer is “reliable sources are sources which provides a, pool of information strengthen by appropriate evidence, well-reasoned by established and proven theories, created by experts and peer-reviewed by scholars in that field.” Mostly credible sources are not established mainly targeting commercial benefits.

Why do we need to refer reliable Sources

After coming across all above points one might wonder, “why I should go behind particularly reliable sources, cannot I use any source or piece of information that reaches me?”  Therefore knowing the purpose of using reliable sources is very important. Reliable sources are extremely crucial for students and researches due to the required accuracy of their academic work. One cannot over value each and every piece of information they find as reliable and accurate. Majority of resources are fake, consist faulty data and biased. Not only that some resources are not based on proven theories, it might be out dated or subjected to be changed by anyone.

Types of Information Sources

All information sources are divided into two major categories such as,

 ·         Primary Sources

Primary sources are raw materials which consist of original documents. Those are first hand materials such as Letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, and sound or video recordings.

·         Secondary Resources

Usually primary sources could be biased; in contrast secondary sources are probably made on analyzing and carefully evaluating information and considering on different perspectives. 

How to determine credibility of a resource

Sources could be found in texture of print and web based. Internet is an information pool where you can access a handful of valuable information. Even though, you need to be pretty more cautious when selecting information via internet. CRAAP method is a kind of a test enables to decide the credibility of a certain source. Following such kind of a scientific test would make your findings less time consuming yet more productive whether is it printed or web based sources.  

• Is this a current intake (Currency)

If you are seeking for information on academic purposes it requires new and updated details because the academic findings are subject to be changed frequently. Therefore always make sure to check the date of publication and adhere only for sources created within 10 years or less. Especially this is in relate to science based sources since new theories and arguments are often brought forward and old opinions and theories might get outdated. Under these circumstances, if a student uses such outdated data his outcome would be unproductive.

•  Is it relevant for your requirement (Relevance)

How much a proficiency the articles presents, if it is not relevant to your requirement it would not impact any sense of using. The relevance should be signposted with clear cut arguments and strong evidence related to the question in hand.

•       Check the author (Authority)

As a student you may be not aware of popular authors of books or journal articles.  Even though you have the chance to check what are the other books done by the same author. This could be done easily for web based sources. The presence of the peer-review process, footnotes, bibliographies, credits, and/or quotations all help establish authority. Carefully look at the credentials of the author and the qualifications he has mastered in the related field.

•   Check the Accuracy

The mentioned data should be graded with highly accurate and backed by evidence strongly supporting the main view point while flowing coherently. Extreme bias or emotion in the language makes accuracy less likely. A trustworthy source definitely comes with a reference list enabling readers to show what the first hand sources were.

•       Find the purpose

Articles are on various purposes. However, when sources aim to entertain or sell, those purposes provide extremely different motives, which can make the source less trustworthy.

High reliable sources for academic purposes?

·         Scholarly articles

Most probably journal articles are counted as higher level of credible sources due to plenty of used references, number of citations and usage of scientific evidences. These materials are backed by peer reviews. Usually reading an article and extracting ideas would be really challenging due to its scientific key terms and lengthy explanations. That is the reason it is advised, to skim through abstract If you want to determine an article as relevant or not. This type of sources requires a paid subscription and if you try access without a subscription it will permit you to view only the abstract.  Even though nowadays universities grant permission for their students to accesses those through university logging free of charge.

·          Academic books

There are bulks of books containing wealthy insights, information and theories written by popular writers and thinkers.  Ex: Principles of Psychology, Thinking fast and slow, The happiness Hypothesis and etc. One can access books physically through a nearby library or from an university library. Books usually comes in print however online books too are becoming popular. Internet can help you to locate the closest library to your area and list out their book titles. For an instance bookshelf, books tracker. 

                                      

Here are few famous digital libraries.

•     Open Library

•      Project Gutenberg

•      Digital theological library

•      Wiley Online Library

•      World Digital Library 

          

·         Government reports

Government documents and government websites are generally considered reliable and  credible sources of information. Many are scholarly, and some are even peer-reviewed; Even though not all government documents are scholarly or peer-reviewed. Government agencies produce a wide range of publications, for different purposes. Anyhow we can rely most probably on such information.

·     Documents release from well reputed organizations

Reputed organizations also issue reports, press conference releases, interviews which could be used as reliable information. At this point, one must not count organizations that are popular as bodies who issue reliable resources. At the safe side it is better to be mindful to select organizations, who do not act on commercial purposes such as,

·         World Health Organization

·         World bank

·         UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund)

·         FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United 

           Nations)

·         American psychological Association

·         Medical Library Association

• Here are some of the academic search engines supports researches and students to explore academic information. 

·         Google Scholar 

·         ResearchGate   

·         BielefeldAcademic Search Engine 

·         MicrosoftAcademic 

        Refseek

·    WorldWide Science

·        Pubmed 

It is advisable to go through web sites which has suffixes of .org, .edu and .gov

Varied quality Documents

Periodical Articles

Periodicals are any type of publication that is published in a series, or periodically Daily newspapers, monthly magazines and journals, and annual newsletters are all periodicals, and the articles inside them are periodical articles. This neither be graded nor as a high quality source. It varies in between better quality and biased information and mostly contains ideas more than information. Therefore these are better to refer to gain an overall ideas of a particular field.

 Ex: Weekly world news, The Atlantic monthly, News week

Evaluating and extracting credible information from selected resources.

Conduct attentive reading in order to achieve targeted information

Since reading academic articles are a very dull and a monotonous activity for most of us. Even though when it comes to academic purposes it is a must for all students to refer scholarly articles. Therefore it would be necessary to follow below methods gain the highest benefit of the source within limited time First go on searching relevant credible sources and collect plenty of.

• Skim only through the Abstract and select only what is relevant.

• Run a quick glance to become familiar with the findings and write down only    key words.

• Read in between lines and try to detect the argument.

• Go on hunting for evidence connected to the main argument.

• Re- read the article and take necessary notes while reading.

• Read the article for the last time while comparing with the original article.

After selecting credible sources, you need to engage in attentive reading in order to reach the goal and extract the required information through it. In addition you can follow a scientific method to increase the efficiency of the entire process. Though the name sounds slightly odd QOOQRRR is one such successful method.

Question - what is the reading material about?

Overview - what topics are included in the source?

Overview - what topics are found in the source?

Question - find out concepts you are unfamiliar with - what does this mean?

Read - The first attempt to understand what is being said.

Re-read - Repeat to make sense of what you read.

Review (your notes) - read the summary you made and see if you understand what is written. 

A modern world, where a significant naval insights and information are discovered and theorized, grabbing them efficiently and tactfully is more crucial as well as most challenging for university students to continue smart learning. If we adhere to the correct tips and scientific routines this process would become interesting as other activities we engage in our student life. 

Furthermore, I would love to invite everybody to share your methods as well as valuable opinions in this virtual platform and help each other.