Academic sources, also referred to as academic sources, are sources that can include books, articles from academic journals, and published expert reports. The content of academic sources has generally been peer-reviewed, meaning that it has been reviewed by experts in the field for accuracy and quality before being published. Sources such as newspaper articles, magazine articles, opinion pieces, and websites are usually not academic, although there are some exceptions. Many journal articles and reports can be found online, for example.
There are many types of sources you can use for an academic article. In this blog post, we examine different types of academic and academic sources and provide examples of the main types of sources. An academic or academic source is one that has undergone peer review. This means that the source has been examined by experts.
Academic sources almost always contain citations or references from other academic sources. Common academic sources include books, articles, websites, and reports. In this section, we define each of these types of sources and provide some examples. It is important to note that sources found in academic databases (accessed through your school library) and those published in university publishers are almost always academic or academic sources.
Common academic sources include books, journal articles, websites, and reports. When an assignment requires academic sources, it usually refers to academic books and articles from academic journals. A quick rule of thumb to know if a source is academic is to look for a list or bibliography of works cited in which the author refers to the work of other researchers. Credible sources are generally reliable and authoritative texts.
They would be texts with support in terms of reliable evidence (facts, data, statistics) and that often refer to previous work by academic authors. The most common credible sources are academic journals, conference papers, and books. Textbooks with several topics, for example, summaries of areas such as organizational behavior or accounting, are useful for presenting a broad vision of a field of study, the relationships between theoretical perspectives, the opinions of different authors, and the models and tools they produce. They offer you a tour of the field of “edited highlights” and help you feel comfortable and confident in your learning.
Textbooks that cover a wide variety can be affected by the decisions made when selecting what to include, and therefore present a partial rather than a complete picture. A general problem with textbooks is the age of the information they contain. It can take up to two years to publish a book, so even in a new book, the information may be out of date. While academic journals are usually more up to date than textbooks published at the same time, it's worth remembering that some journals have a two-year waiting list for the publication of articles.
Here are a range of academic search engines for accessing academic articles, journals, and other academic sources. The first search results also usually indicate if they have currently or ever been employed as academics at a university, which, of course, is another way of knowing that their work is reputable. In some cases, you might find an academic's work published on a separate website, such as their blog. Usually, this only happens in high-quality journals and university publishers, although many other reputable publishers that usually publish educational and academic texts will also have a peer-review process.
To identify an academic book, search for an academic publisher (for example, University of Toronto Press). When researching a topic for a university assignment, academic sources are preferred over other types of sources. While it's good practice to ensure that you only use academic sources in the research and writing of your essays, it's even better to ensure that those sources are peer-reviewed, as this will ensure that they are of higher quality and highly appreciated in your field. This video from North Carolina State University explains how an academic submits a research paper to a journal publisher and the entire process the article goes through before publication.
Government reports, commercial reports from academic databases, and scientific reports are generally considered academic sources. There may be cases in which it is acceptable to use a non-academic source, but these will be special cases and are more common in some academic disciplines than in others. That's where you can find a wealth of information published in academic journals and academic publishers. The most important piece of advice that academics want to give their students in the first year is usually that they should use the library as their only source of references for their essays and assignments until they have a solid understanding of the types and quality of sources that are acceptable to their discipline.
These reports usually provide data and statistics on a specific topic or topic and can be used as evidence in an academic article. .
