If you want to use the world wide web as a resource
for term papers in my courses, you are welcome to do so, but: (1) you
must be cautious and evaluate the sites you use carefully, (2) you must
document your web sources with a proper bibliographic reference, (3) and you
must be extra careful to avoid plagiarism.
See my notes below for help on
EVALUATING and DOCUMENTING web sources.
NOTE: Plagiarizing material from the web, like any
other case of plagiarism, will almost certainly result in your failing the
course, and possible additional academic penalties. See USD's
Academic Integrity Policy.
Evaluating Web Sources
Is It Reliable?
Again, as it says at the top of this assignment, make sure you
choose a site that contains material of a quality that could be used for an academic
research paper. An important aspect of the report will be to make at least a
preliminary assessment of the reliability for such a purpose of the material presented.
When doing research, but especially when searching on the WWW, one has to be cautious
about the nature and the quality of the sources of information that one comes across. In
your report, you should address questions such as the following:
Would this site be suitable for use as a source for an academic research paper?
If so, would any limitations, balances, cautions, or caveats need to be
specified? Is the material is popular, journalistic, or scholarly? Is it based on
careful research? How do you know? Does the author give references to scholarly sources,
for example, in a bibliography or reference list? Is it slanted to a particular point of
view? Is it trying to promote, or debunk, a particular religious point of view? What kind
of advocacy is going on this site? How objective is the material? Has the site been
updated recently?*
In this connection, please
check out the
Evaluating Research Materials
page at the University at Albany.
If you really would like to become an expert at evaluating Internet resources, check
out The Internet Detective,
a comprehensive on-line tutorial on the subject. Mastering such skills could well be
a good "career move"!
*As part of your evaluation, you should look on the web pages you are using for
indication of the date on which the page was last updated. If the site has not be updated
for quite some time, or if no date is given, it may be an indication that the site is
unreliable.
Finding the Author or Publisher
One important clue for evaluation is to try to determine who is the author or
publisher, that is, the person responsible for the contents of the web site. You should
ask yourself: "Who created this site, and why?" It may be an
organization or individual. To find this out, go the "home page" or title page
of the web (the starting point), usually, but not always, the first page you found. Most
web sites identify the owner somewhere on the home page, or at least have a link on the
home page to a page giving the addresses, etc., of the person or organization responsible.
Sometimes, the owner is obvious. If not, move around the page using the scroll bar. Look
at the bottom, especially, or see if there's a link with an organization's name or one
labeled "information." If nothing else works, you can sometimes find who's
responsible for a web site by tracing the address back, level by level. For example, if
you start with the site
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/jainhlinks.html
there's no indication of the author (except for an email address at the bottom). But if you put your cursor at the end of the URL
in the "location" window in your browser and delete up to the first forward
slash (/), thus
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/
and then press return, you get to the author's home page and find out who he is.
If after all this there is no indication as to who is responsible for publishing this
web site, it is probably a good idea to move on elsewhere--or, at the very least, treat
the information with considerable caution.
Note: In evaluating a site, look for the person responsible for the content,
not the technical support folks. Don't confuse the Internet service provider (the company
that runs the computer system the site is stored on) or the web site designer,
"web-master," other technical consultants with the actual publisher or author of
the site. These support organizations or people, while often given credit on a site's home
page, are not typically responsible for the site's content.
Remember: There are many self-appointed experts on religion. You need to be cautious.
For example, just because a person is a professor or has some other connection with a
university does not mean that s/he is a scholar of religion. S/he could be an engineer
with an (amateur) interest in religion.
Other Clues
Some web pages have advertising.
There are two things to consider if you find advertising: (1) the advertiser is not the
publisher of the web site, though there may obviously be some connection, and (2) it is
probably best for academic purposes to avoid sites with advertising, especially if they
have a commercial tone. Be very cautious about using sites that are obviously
commercial, like web bookstores, or sites that are promoting a particular religious point of view, guru, or spiritual program .
Of course, information may be reliable even if the person providing it is unknown or
has dubious motives. Whether or not you feel comfortable about who is providing the
information, you should also--as indicated above--try to determine where the information
comes from. Are any references given? Do the references seem credible? Are any other clues
as to the authenticity of the information?
Documenting Web Sources
The best guide to citing citing web resources that I am aware of is the MLA Parenthetical Documentation for Internet Sources brochure. Please print it out and use it.
See also Online! A Reference Guide for Using Internet Sources.
For web source references, make sure you get the URL right. Cutting and pasting is the safest method. If you are sloppy about this, you will
lose points.
Happy surfing!
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