Find sources - Wikipedia

Author: Protyasha Roy

Created: 2025-01-03

Last Modified: 2025-01-03

Categories: Notes

Tags: Notes Literature-notes

Table of content

Source
About
Summary
Key points
Types of sources
Where to look for sources
Evaluating sources
Further resources

Source

find-source: wikipedia

About

This article is about finding sources to support specific wikipedia articles. Since articles on an encyclopedia have to be neutral and accurate, the sources also have to be independent. But many sources are either not available online or need special permission to get access to. Even with this obstacles there are ways to get access to these credible sources. Academic papers through open access repositories, news stories from newspapers with a reputation for accuracy, and books which have previews on digital libraries.

Summary

So to find credible sources, we need to be careful about few things and for specific topic we need to look for specific types of sources. And to find the best sourcecs, there are several ways and tools as well.

Key points

Types of sources

Even though there are many types of sources, some are appropriate only in certain situations. For specific case, we might need to look for specific types of sources.

Scholarly articles: short papers published in academic journals.
Books and monographs: longer academic or popular works.
Textbooks: Instructional or educational manual for a particular subject.
Dictionaries and encyclopedias: reference works containing a listing of terms and their meanings.
Archival: historic documents.
Magazine articles: short papers in popular or trade publications.
Newspaper article or news reports: writing or multimedia that discusses current events or editorial analysis.
Reports and other grey literature: A broad category that includes most government documents, conference proceedings, and other writings not provided by traditional publishers.
Statistics: data, particularly census data, and analysis.
Theses and dissertations: works created as a requirement for the completion of an advanced postsecondary degree.
Websites, blogs and other user-generated sources: online content from a variety of authors/publishers.

Where to look for sources

Search engines like DuckDuckGo or other general search engiens.
For academic material particular scholarly search engines are recommended. Such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus, BASE, Internet Archive’s scholar archive.
Internet archive and Google books index millions of books, both academic and popular.
Unpaywall browser extension finds legal free versions of scholarly articles.
OurResearch.org is a non-profit organization that creates tools for better research and free access to scholarly articles. Unpaywall is a product of OurResearch.
Public or resaerch libraries have both books and research databases.
Bibliographies outline the main scholarly sources on a topic.
Looking for cites and what cited it. Citation chaining

Evaluating sources

Identifiable biases, qualification and reputation of the author.
Biases, editorial reputation of the publisher. Or is it a self-published?
Publication date. Is it outdated?
Citations based on facts or opinions if it cites its own sources?
Is the source primary, secondary or tertiary?
Are there obvious errors or omissions?

Further resources

Further Questions

What are the best open access/public repositories?
What are the best open access/public library databases?
What are the newspapers highly reputated for their accuracy?
What are the best digital libraries?
What are the best academic journals for scholarly articles?
Best sites to get textbooks?
Best sites to get archival(historic documents) materials?
Best magazine articles?
Best sites to get reports and grey literature?
Best sites to get statistics?
Best sites to get theses and dissertations?
Best sites to get websites, blogs and other user-generated sources?
What are the best search engines for research purpose?
How to optimize search engines for scholarly materials?
What scholarly search engines are best?