Finding Reliable Resources for Academic Purposes

 Reliable Resources for Academic Purposes

As a student, we have to gather information for our academic purposes. It is important to find out and refer reliable resources to avoid unnecessary and false information. In this article I am going to introduce what are the ways that you can find reliable resources and the types of resources you can refer as a student. 

You can gather information from textbooks, journal articles, websites and other online resources. When we gather information from these type of resources we have to consider various things. Some of these are the date of publication, the author and the university, publisher etc. Because all these things affect to the reliability and validity of information.

However, textbooks are the most famous way of getting information. As a student, before getting information from book, you have to find out the author of the book. And the other important thing is the date of publication. This helps you to decide, is this information you use up to date and relevant to what you are learning. After that you can check the reference list to find out the original resources. You can google the author's name and the book to check further information.

Other important resources are journal articles. as a university student, I have to use journal articles for getting academic information. Famous and easiest way to find out journal articles is using "google scholar" search engine. This search engine gives you thousands of credible journal articles. Here I have mentioned some of the database that are recommended for use. 

JSTOR

SAGE journals online

Oxford university press

Willey online library

Science Direct

Year of publication is very important before getting information from journal articles. And place of publication also important. You can use abstract to decide whether the article useful or not.

Most famous and easiest method to collect information is online resources. Most of the students are using internet to gather information. but, you should know what are the reliable and credible resources because there are lot of false information on the internet. 

You can use google scholar and university websites to find credible resources. Some universities published journal articles and e-books and research publications. You should avoid Wikipedia for academic purposes because the information that you find from Wikipedia can be edited by another person without permission from the writer or publisher.    

These are the ways that you can find out reliable and credible resources for academic purposes. 

If you have any other valuable tips, please put a comment on comment section. I'm Maneesha from Open University of Sri Lanka. 😊😊  

By Mashu.