Why Source Quality Determines Your Grade

Professors can tell immediately when a student has relied on low-quality sources. Using Wikipedia, news blogs, or non-peer-reviewed articles signals a lack of research skills — and marks suffer accordingly. This guide shows you exactly where to find authoritative sources.

The Best Academic Databases

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) — Free, comprehensive, and easy to use. Filter by year and look for highly-cited papers. Click "Cited by" to find follow-up research.

JSTOR (jstor.org) — Excellent for humanities and social sciences. Free limited access, full access through most university libraries.

PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) — The gold standard for medical and biological sciences. Free and comprehensive.

EBSCO and ProQuest — Available through your university library login. These aggregate thousands of journals across all disciplines.

ERIC (eric.ed.gov) — Education research database, completely free.

The CRAAP Test for Evaluating Sources

Before using any source, run it through the CRAAP test:

  • Currency — When was it published? For fast-moving fields, use sources from the last 5 years
  • Relevance — Does it directly address your topic?
  • Authority — Who wrote it? What are their credentials?
  • Accuracy — Is the information supported by evidence? Does it cite its own sources?
  • Purpose — Why was it written? Informational or persuasive?

Red Flags to Avoid

  • No author listed
  • No publication date
  • No citations or references
  • .com domains for factual claims
  • Content mills, blogs, and opinion pieces

One good peer-reviewed source is worth ten Google search results. Quality always beats quantity when it comes to academic research.