How to Evaluate Sources

Evaluating the Relevance of a Scholarly or Professional Journal Article

Relevance is the extent to which a source provides information you can use in your research writing project. There are several ways to determine whether the information presented in a scholarly or professional journal article is likely to be relevant to your project. For purposes of this demonstration, we'll follow the efforts of Anthony Gomez, a student writing a research project about the use of service learning in college classrooms. Anthony located an article from Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, a scholarly journal. The article, "Learning at the Edges: Challenges to the Sustainability of Service Learning in Higher Education," was published in October 2000 and is available as an Acrobat document. We'll follow Anthony's progress as he evaluated this article for its relevance to his research project.

The authors of articles in scholarly or professional journals use one of two main strategies to help readers determine whether their article is relevant to readers needs and interests. An abstract—a brief description of the article and its results—often appears at the beginning of the article. When an abstract is not used, an article's introduction often provides similar information.

As you can see, the Language and Learning Across the Disciplines article begins with a four-paragraph introduction that explains what the authors discuss.

Anthony read the four-paragraph introduction to decide whether or not the article might be relevant to his research. Because his project compares the benefits and drawbacks of service learning, Anthony felt the article seemed relevant after reading the introduction. His next step was to quickly scan the article, looking for bold-faced or underlined text type, the first and last sentences of paragraphs, and other highlighted key material.

In your research process, once you have determined that the article is relevant, the next step is to evaluate its relevance in greater depth. Read the entire article and ask yourself whether the information it presents will help you accomplish your purposes as a writer. Keep your eyes open for new information or for information that will help you add something new to the conversation. You'll quickly learn that sources offering something new are few and far between. Also, consider whether the article is relevant in terms of the way it tackles its subject matter. Always ask yourself not only "Will this do?" but "Would something else be better?"

Because Anthony's project is about the positive and negative aspects of service learning programs in colleges, he felt this article would provide appropriate examples he could use in his project and was relevant to his research.

Click on the Continue button to view a demonstration of evaluating the evidence used in the article.