For your assignment, your professor has asked you to find, use, and cite at least 4 "credible" sources. So, what is a credible source?
The answer is that it really depends on the discipline and what your professor is asking for in the assignment. A credible source could include a scholarly source (i.e. a book, eBook, academic video, etc.), professional source (i.e. a report from a professional community), or peer-reviewed journal article (as is defined on the previous page). When in doubt that a source is appropriate for your assignment, ask your professor!
Before you trust an information source, it is important that you use your critical thinking skills to evaluate it! To do this, you might use an evaluation criterion, such as SIFT, RADAR, OR ACT UP, as are described below.
What I really want for you to take from this page, is that no matter where your information is coming from, please stop, and think about the information that you are looking at before you trust it and ultimately use it yourself!
SIFT is an evaluation criteria that was created by Mike Caufield at Washington State University, primarily created to evaluate web sources. Use the SIFT criteria to build your digital literacy skills.
SIFT means:
Butler, Walter, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith. "The SIFT Method." Introduction to College Research, PressBooks, 2021.
RADAR is evaluation criteria that was originally created by Jane Mandalios in 2013. The RADAR framework challenges users to look at a source, and evaluate the source for:
Mandalios, Jane. "RADAR: An Approach for Helping Students Evaluate Internet Sources. Journal of Information Science, vol. 39, no. 4, 2013, https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889
The ACT UP criteria is an evaluation criteria that was created by Dawn Stahura, at Salem State University in 2017. This evaluation criteria challenges users to evaluate a source with special consideration to the:
Stahura, D. ACT UP: Evaluation Method. Salem State University, 2017, https://libguides.salemstate.edu/actup.