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Evaluating Web Pages

Web pages vary tremendously in quality. Quite simply put, the web includes both academic and non-academic material. Search engines and directories, with the exception of Infomine, generally do not separate scholarly and popular or authoritative and non-authoritative resources from each other. To make matters worse, most current academic material on the web is either available as non-full text citations to a journal articles or books, or is inside the walls of licensed databases like those in GALILEO. Still, one occasionally gets lucky. Scholars, teachers, and others sometimes publish papers on the web that are of fairly good quality. In addition, there are useful and authoritative non-academic web sites. Here is how to tell the treasures from the trash. When examining a web page, ask yourself several questions:

1. Does this web page have the information that I need?
   If a web page is useless to you, then stop right there. Go find another one. Be sure that the web page has enough information as well. For in-depth research something that is the length of a printed article is usually better than something with only one or two paragraphs.
2. Did the author of the web page sign his/her name?
   Academics and authoritative folks are generally proud of their work and not only sign their real names, but also give information about where they work. Frequently this includes an institution's name, an e-mail address, and often a real life address or even phone number as well.
3. Is the author someone I can trust to give good information?
   You should know not only who the author is, but what the author's credentials are. Look for work by authors who are experts in the field discussed. If you're looking for information on a comet, a professional astronomer is usually a more authoritative source than a biologist.
4. Does the page include references to other literature?
   Academic style web pages resemble scholarly articles. This means they include references to other published articles and materials, in other words, a Works Cited.
5. Is the web page up to date?
   Look for a date of last revision. Look at the dates of the most recent content. Look at the dates of the literature cited. Test the links on the page. Out of date pages tend to accumulate dead links. It is easy to put up a web page and forget about it. The net is full of stale pages. Make sure the information you find is current enough for your purposes.
6. Is the author of the page trying to sell something?
   Advertisements do not have the "objectivity" of scholarly communication. Generally it is a good idea to skip pages that are or include lots of advertisements.
7. Who published the page?
   Organizations can have a stake in the issue discussed on the web page. This is called bias. While it is not a bad thing, you need to be aware that it exists and take it in to account.

Back to Searching for and Evaluating Internet Sources.

EHK -- January 2005