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AC:701 & AC:421 Internship For Credit (Boss): Determining Quality & Source Type

This research guide is designed to help AC:701 & AC:421 students find and identify high quality sources for their research projects.

ASK YOURSELF: Who, What, When, Where & Why?

Information is not just text on a page. Sources of information are described/categorized in a number of ways. See the boxes below:

Publication Type

Types of Publications:

  • Blogs
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Trade Journals/Practitioner Journals
  • Academic Scholarly Journals
  • Academic Scholarly Peer reviewed Journals (Refereed).
  • Books
  • Chapter of book
  • Dissertation/Thesis
  • Working Paper/White paper

For serial publications (i.e. Newspapers, Magazines & Journals), use Ulrich's or Cabell's (see below) to determine the quality of the publication you are looking at.

Refereed, Acceptance Rate & Impact Factor

Document Type (Type of Article)

Types of articles:

  • Literature Review
  • Original Research/Research Study.
  • Bibliography
  • Business Case
  • Case Study
  • Commentary
  • Conference Paper/Proceeding
  • Correspondence
  • Dissertation/Thesis
  • Editorial
  • Essay
  • Feature Article
  • Government & Official Document
  • Industry Report
  • Interview
  • Letter To The Editor
  • Speech/Lecture
  • Standards & Practice Guidelines
  • Working Paper/Pre-print

For assistance identifying a research study, please take a look at this presentation...Components of a Scholarly Article. These slides will provide you with an overview of the most common elements found in most scholarly research studies.

For assistance identifying a literature review, please take a look at the Bentley Library's How do I write a Literature Review? FAQ response.

Determining Quality: Ask questions!

  • Is the author identified?
  • What are the author's credentials? Education? Work experience?
  • Has the author written other sources about this topic? (body of work)
  • Does the article cite credible sources in the bibliography?
  • Is the article cited in any other articles?
  • How current is the article?
  • Who is the publisher? (for example: academic organization/association, research institute, university, scholarly or popular press)