Evaluating your sources Before deciding whether or not to incorporate what you have found into your literature review, you need to evaluate the resources to make sure that they contain information which is valuable and pertinent. Web resources need more careful thought to ensure their quality.

Currency refers to how recent the information in a source is. More recent is often better . . but not always. Currency tends to be highly important in fields like science, math, medicine, engineering, or any other field that relies on experimentation for data.

Currency: The Timeliness of the Information The date information was published or produced tells you how current it is or how contemporaneous it is with the topic you are researching. Key indicators of the currency of the information are: date of copyright. date of publication.

As you examine each source, it is important to evaluate each source to determine the quality of the information provided within it. Common evaluation criteria include: purpose and intended audience, authority and credibility, accuracy and reliability, currency and timeliness, and objectivity or bias.

Types of Reliable Sources Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles or books -written by researchers for students and researchers. Original research, extensive bibliography. Found in GALILEO’s academic databases and Google Scholar. Anatomy of a Scholarly Article.

Five characteristics of high quality information are accuracy, completeness, consistency, uniqueness, and timeliness. Information needs to be of high quality to be useful and accurate. The information that is input into a data base is presumed to be perfect as well as accurate.

With that in mind, here are eight ways to tell if a website is reliable.

1. Look for Established Institutions.
2. Look for Sites with Expertise.
3. Steer Clear of Commercial Sites.
4. Beware of Bias.
5. Check the Date.
6. Consider the Site’s Look.
7. Avoid Anonymous Authors.
8. Check the Links.

Four Components are :Hardware,Software,Database & Network.

Good information is relevant for its purpose, sufficiently accurate for its purpose, complete enough for the problem, reliable and targeted to the right person.

Some of the characteristics of good information include:

• Accurate. Information is said to be accurate when it represents all the facts pertaining to an issue.
• Complete. Information is complete when there are no missing parts of the data.
• Cost-Beneficial.
• User-targeted.
• Relevant.
• Authoritative.
• Timely.
• Easy to Use.

Information goods are commodities that provide value to consumers as a result of the information it contains and refers to any good or service that can be digitalized. Examples of information goods includes books, journals, computer software, music and videos.

In general, information published by the government is both current and based on reliable research, even if no one author is listed. In general, print publications with authors and listed sources tend to be reliable because they provide sources which readers can verify. You can always find information on any source.

Good quality information is:

• Relevant. Information obtained and used should be needed for decision-making – it doesn’t matter how interesting it is.
• Up-to-date. Information needs to be timely if it is to be actioned.
• Accurate.
• Meeting user needs.
• Easy to use and understand.
• Worth the cost.
• Reliable.