How to Evaluate Information Found on the Net

The availability and growth of the Internet offers students, teachers and researchers the opportunity to find information and data from all over the world. In addition, the development of the World Wide Web has made the Internet easier to use, both for finding information and for publishing it electronically. Because so much information is available, and because that information can appear to be fairly "anonymous", it is necessary to develop skills to evaluate what you find. When you use a research or academic library, the books, journals and other resources have already been evaluated by a librarian or by a mechanism set up by a librarian. When you use an index or a database to find information on any given topic, the index or database is often produced by a professional or scholarly organization that selects the journals to be indexed on the basis of their quality. If the index or database is not produced by such an organization, it is usually the work of a commercial indexing and abstracting business that qualifies as part of the information industry. In other words, every resource you find has been evaluated in one way or another before you ever see it. When you are using the World Wide Web, none of this applies. There are no filters between you and the Internet. In addition, the ease of constructing Web documents results in information of the widest range of quality, written by authors of the widest range of authority, available on an "even playing field". Excellent resources reside along side the most dubious. The Internet epitomizes the concept of Caveat lector: Let the reader beware. This document discusses the criteria by which scholars in most fields evaluate print information, and shows how the same criteria can be used to assess information found on the Internet.

Basic criteria for evaluating all forms of information, and how they apply to the Internet

There are certain criteria that should be applied when evaluating all forms of information, be it in print, on film, or electronic. These criteria include the following:

• Authorship
• Publishing body
• Referral to and/or knowledge of other sources
• Accuracy or verifiability
• Currency

Authorship is perhaps the major criterion used in evaluating information. Who wrote this? When we look for information with some type of critical value, we want to know the basis of the authority with which the author speaks. Here are some possible filters:

• In your own field of study, the author is a well-known and well-regarded name you recognize.
• When you find an author you do not recognize:
• the author is mentioned in a positive fashion by another author or another person you trust as an authority;
• you found or linked to the authorís Web/Internet document from another document you trust;
• the Web/Internet document you are reading gives biographical information, including the author's position, institutional affiliation and address;
• biographical information is available by linking to another document; this enables you to judge whether the authorís credentials allow him/her to speak with authority on a given topic;

if none of the above, there is an address and telephone number as well as an e-mail address for the author in order to request further information on his or her work and professional background. An e- mail address alone gives you no more information than you already have.

The publishing body also helps evaluate any kind of document you may be reading. In the print universe, this generally means that the author's manuscript has undergone screening in order to verify that it meets the standards or aims of the organization that serves as publisher. This may include peer review. On the Internet, ask the following questions to assess the role and authority of the "publisher", which in this case means the server (computer) where the document lives:

• Is the name of any organization given on the document you are reading? Are there headers, footers, or a distinctive watermark that show the document to be part of an official academic or scholarly Web site? Can you contact the site Webmaster from this document?
• If not, can you link to a page where such information is listed? Can you tell that itís on the same server and in the same directory (by looking at the URL)?
• Is this organization recognized in the field in which you are studying?
• Is this organization suitable to address the topic at hand?
• Can you ascertain the relationship of the author and the publisher/server? Was the document that you are viewing prepared as part of the authorís professional duties (and, by extension, within his/her area of expertise)? Or is the relationship of a casual or for-fee nature, telling you nothing about the authorís credentials within an institution?
• Can you verify the identity of the server where the document resides? Internet programs such dnslookup and whois will be of help.
• Does this Web page actually reside in an individualís personal Internet account, rather than being part of an official Web site? This type of information resource should be approached with the greatest caution. Hints on identifying personal pages are available in Understanding and Decoding URLs.

 Referral to and/or knowledge of the literature refers to the context in which the author situates his or her work. This reveals what the author knows about his or her discipline and its practices. This allows you to evaluate the author's scholarship or knowledge of trends in the area under discussion. The following criteria serve as a filter for all formats of information:

• The document includes a bibliography.
• The author alludes to or displays knowledge of related sources, with proper attribution.
• The author displays knowledge of theories, schools of thought, or techniques usually considered appropriate in the treatment of his or her subject.
• If the author is using a new theory or technique as a basis for research, he or she discusses the value and/or limitations of this new approach.
• If the author's treatment of the subject is controversial, he or she knows and acknowledges this.

Accuracy or verifiability of details is an important part of the evaluation process, especially when you are reading the work of an unfamiliar author presented by an unfamiliar organization, or presented in a non-traditional way. Criteria for evaluating accuracy include:

• For a research document, the data that was gathered and an explanation of the research method(s) used to gather and interpret it are included.
• The methodology outlined in the document is appropriate to the topic and allows the study to be duplicated for purposes of verification.
• The document relies on other sources that are listed in a bibliography or includes links to the documents themselves.
• The document names individuals and/or sources that provided non- published data used in the preparation of the study.
• The background information that was used can be verified for accuracy.

Currency refers to the timeliness of information. In printed documents, the date of publication is the first indicator of currency. For some types of information, currency is not an issue: authorship or place in the historical record is more important (e.g., T. S. Eliot's essays on tradition in literature). For many other types of data, however, currency is extremely important, as is the regularity with which the data is updated. Apply the following criteria to ascertain currency:

• The document includes the date(s) at which the information was gathered (e.g., US Census data).
• The document refers to clearly dated information (e.g., "Based on 1990 US Census data.").
• Where there is a need to add data or update it on a constant basis, the document includes information on the regularity of updates.
• The document includes a publication date or a "last updated" date.
• The document includes a date of copyright.
• If no date is given in an electronic document, you can view the directory in which it resides and read the date of latest modification.

If you found information using one of the search engines available on the Internet, such as AltaVista or InfoSeek, a directory of the Internet such as Yahoo, or any of the services that rate World Wide Web pages, you need to know:

• How that search engine looks for information, and how often their information is updated. An excellent Web document explaining this process was written by Terry A. Gray at Palomar College. Click here to access this article.
• How that rating service evaluates Web pages. Another excellent resource that includes information on this topic is Finding Quality on the Net, by Hope Tillman of Babson College.

All information, whether in print or by byte, needs to be evaluated by readers for authority, appropriateness, and other personal criteria for value. If you find information that is "too good to be true", it probably is. Never use information that you cannot verify. Establishing and learning criteria to filter information you find on the Internet is a good beginning for becoming a critical consumer of information in all forms. "Cast a cold eye" (as Yeats wrote) on everything you read. Question it. Look for other sources that can authenticate or corroborate what you find. Learn to be skeptical and then learn to trust your instincts.

© 1996 Elizabeth E. Kirk

Last modification: 10.24.96