Annotated Bibliographies

How to find credibility information

Find the Wikipedia article

• If an author or source is well-known enough, use the Wikipedia article to quickly check for background information and note any controversies.
• The Wikipedia page of a scholarly journal is also a good quick place to check if it is peer-reviewed.

Look on the source itself for bio information

• A journal, newspaper, magazine, book, or website likely has information on it somewhere about the author.
• If there is no author on a website, the website assumes authorship; look for an "About" page but don't use that exclusively.

Search the author or publication online

• Search the name of the author inside quotes, such as "Oliver Sacks."
  • Add site:edu for scholarly journal authors.
  • Add the word journalist or the name of the newspaper for journalists.
• When there is no information about an author online, consider whether they may have died before online presence was established.