Guide to Information Seeking: Evaluating information

In information retrieval, it is important to be able to distinguish between scholarly, professional, and general/popular publications, so that their suitability can be evaluated, for example, as source material for a report, essay, or thesis.

General/Popular publications are, for example, magazines and newspapers. In these types of publications, the target audience is the general public. In magazines and newspapers, the writer is often a journalist instead of an expert, who either has or does not have expertise on the topic. Examples of general publications: Time magazine, The Guardian, Wired, National Geographic.

Trade journals are journals published by trade associations or universities of applied sciences, whose target audience are professionals in the field. The writer of trade publications is often a professional in the field, or sometimes a journalist who knows the field. The topics deal with current news and practical information from the field. Examples of trade journals: Nursing Outlook, The Journal of Marketing, The Journal of Engineering Education, and journals published by universities of applied sciences.

Scholarly journals are scholarly journals/periodicals (sometimes also called journals, peer reviewed journals, scientific journals), whose target audience is considerably smaller than the previous ones; mainly researchers, experts, and students in the field. The articles are based on research and the results gained from it, which can be very detailed/thorough. They can be identified, for example, by the following things:

• The article is often peer reviewed, where one or more experts in the field evaluate the scientific quality and content of the article and modify it based on their comments before publication.
• The article structure usually follows the formal IMRD structure. Following sections can be found in the article: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion or analysis of the results.
• The author(s) is a researcher/expert and their background organisation is a well-known research institute or university/college.
• The article uses sources extensively that are clearly marked as citations in-text and reference list / bibliography.

More information: https://libguides.tuni.fi/information-searching-guide/evaluation.

Peer review or referee process is an essential part of academic publishing. Before articles are published in peer reviewed journals, they have been read and reviewed by experts in a relevant field. For example, the phrasing of the research question, research methods, and interpretation of results are evaluated in the peer review process. The reviewers recommend to the journal editors if the article should be accepted or not. The aim of the process is to improve article quality by refining key points, identifying errors and incomplete arguments, and giving authors constructive feedback and suggestions.

Peer review is generally thought to be a guarantee for a high quality article. You can filter your search results in many databases to only include peer reviewed articles. Some terms used in databases are: scholarly / scientific / peer reviewed research article / review article.

Information on peer review may not be provided in an individual article. You can usually find information on peer review on the journal home page. For example, the About the journal section on the Applied Nursing Research journal's home page states that the journal is peer reviewed: "Applied Nursing Research presents original, peer-reviewed research findings...".

When using article search in Finna, narrow the search by checking the box Peer reviewed:

Primary sources or original sources provide new information and give direct evidence on a topic. Primary sources include for example research articles and dissertations, where authors report their own research and its findings.

Secondary sources discuss or refer to primary sources. Secondary sources comment on original research, evaluate, summarise or compare them, or draw conclusions from them. Secondary sources include for example review articles, meta-analyses, textbooks, and news articles.

Secondary sources include analysis and interpretation, and the contents of the primary source may become distorted. This does not mean secondary sources are automatically unusable, but you should consider their usability along with other criteria. You may use for example a review articles published in a scholarly journal, where they draw together a number of research findings to summarise current knowledge on a topic. You can also use an article where the author summarises the findings in their dissertation. In contrast, you should not use a newspaper article on a new research finding, but seek out the original research and use it directly.

See video below on the difference between primary and secondary sources and ways to tell them apart:

Video: Primary vs Secondary Journal Articles, © Rasmussen College Library & Learning Services.