A Guide to Evaluate Academic Sources to Develop Research Paper: Source Selection in Academic Writing

Abstract

It is significant to identify and evaluate sources in a research study to ensure their credibility to be used in an academic research paper. Each source should be evaluated in terms of being related to the research question and covering research objectives. However, despite the importance of source selection as one of the initial steps in conducting a research study, it may seem challenging for researchers to find relevant sources based on the topic of their study and evaluate them appropriately. The main aim of this chapter is to clarify the process of choosing sources for a research project. For this purpose, the process of source selection is divided into several steps including recognizing the types of available sources, their ranks, requirements of the study project, searching and searching tools, and finally the process of evaluating sources.