Finding sources
The university library is the most helpful resource to find the
majority of your sources for your research paper. Here at UNT, that means using the
The Internet is another way to find sources that you need by using
on-line catalogs. In addition to those,
you can also use sites like EBSCO research database. This site is available through UNT and can
help you search through an immense number of academic journals for your
sources. You should use key words
in your search. Make sure that you skim
all articles for acceptability before you print them. Many students like to search the Internet as
a whole, which is generally not recommended when writing academic research
papers for several reasons. First of
all, you can waste a lot of time searching, never finding what you need for
your topic. Secondly, many Internet
sites are not academic. Instead they are commercial. These sites use information to support their
own self-interests. The claims they make
may not be based on research and may not be evaluated by others. Thirdly, many of these sites use opinions
rather than facts. Your research paper
should contain YOUR opinions based on the research studies that you have read
and compiled to support your thesis. The
purpose of your research paper is not to support someone else’s opinion. If you decide that the website you find is
relevant to your topic and has facts that are based on research, you may use
it, but you should limit your Internet sources to no more than two. The Internet should be used as a supplement
to your well-founded research from academic sources. It should not be used as the bulk of your
reference list page.
Critical analysis of sources can be difficult, but there are some
questions you can ask yourself to help you decide whether your source is
scholarly or non-scholarly.
Initial Appraisal
The author’s name should be provided.
If you see that author’s name mentioned in other sources, chances are,
he or she is a well-respected author in the field of your topic.
If your topic involves the sciences or medicine, you need to use
current information. A book published in
1970 about a specific disease may have already been made obsolete by recent
research.
Is the publisher a university press?
If it is, you can be certain that the information is accurate.
To distinguish between scholarly and non-scholarly journals, it’s
necessary to look at the title. Some
examples of scholarly journals are: Applied
Linguistics, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Journal
of Marriage and the Family.
These journals have research studies in them that are reviewed before
publication and are subject to peer evaluation.
The research published in scholarly journals follows accepted research
practices, including the scientific method.
These articles are substantial in length and are not usually accompanied
by pictures although there may be some charts or graphs.
Another category of articles that may be used for sources in a research
paper are found in news or general interest periodicals. These periodicals provide information for the
general public. They may appear to be
more exciting than scholarly journals, but the target audience is still an
educated audience. Most of the major
newspapers fall into this category, such as the Dallas Morning News, or the
Non-scholarly journals would be popular magazines or sensational
periodicals. The articles tend to be
short and have colorful pictures. Some
examples are Parenting, Fast Company, and Sports Illustrated. These journals tend to be published monthly,
whereas scholarly journals are published quarterly (four times a year). Some examples of sensational periodicals are
the National Inquirer and the Star. These sources should be avoided when choosing
sources for an argumentative research paper.
Content Analysis
Once you have chosen your source and it meets the criteria of being
scholarly outlined in the initial appraisal, it’s necessary to read the
information to decide if the content is not only useful in providing evidence
for your thesis but also logical in reasoning.
The information must be written objectively avoiding all emotionally
charged language. Emotionally charged
language uses phrases that purposely cause an emotional response in the
reader. The language inflames people’s
emotions in a way that will cause them to agree with the author without
requiring facts, objective information, or logical reasoning.
This is also the time to consider whether your source is a primary or secondary source. Primary
sources are the raw research studies that were done to collect data to either
support or refute a specific theory. For
example, a primary research source might be the test results of people’s
reaction times after drinking 1 ounce of alcohol. Usually the theory is explained and the
researcher makes a hypothesis (a guess) about the outcome. Often times, past research studies are
mentioned in this introduction. Then the
researcher describes how the experiment was done, how many subjects (people)
were tested, and what the results were.
At the end, the researcher draws conclusions based on the results of the
experiment. A secondary source is one in
which the research studies are cited in the article as evidence of a particular
author’s theories. The author will list
the primary sources used for his/her research in a works cited area. It’s a good idea to use both primary and
secondary sources in your research paper.
4. Using Internet sources
As mentioned before, Internet websites should be used with caution, and
no more than two should be used in your research paper. Look for websites that have .gov or .edu in
the address. Websites with .com and .net
are often commercial or personal websites, so you cannot be assured of the correctness
of information on those sites. Sites
which contain .org in the address can be used if the site is a non-profit news
or educational organization. However,
you must be careful to avoid websites which contain .org in the address if they
are organizations which are endorsing personal or political positions. Often, these sites are biased toward one side
of an issue; therefore, they present facts in a misleading way to support a
specific agenda. Remember that anyone
with access to the Internet can put together a website and write anything.
To search the Internet use these commonly used Internet search engines:
Search Engine URL
Hotbot http://www.hotbot.com/
Infoseek http://infoseek.go.com
Lycos http://www.lycos.com
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com
Excite http://www.excite.com
AltaVist http://www.altavista.com
Following is a list of addresses for megasearches, which look for
matches to your key word(s) in several search engines at the same time or one
after the other.
Megasearcher URL
Web Crawler http://www.crawler.com
Metacrawler http://www.go2net.com/search.html
Savvy Search http://www.savvysearch.com