Social Work Courses & Research

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.

Once you locate a professional organization or agency website that appears helpful, you may have a hard time navigating their search bar. Most of these websites do not include advanced search functions, so it's hard to navigate the internal rules.  Thankfully, there is a way to use Google to search your website for specific information. Using this domain search limiter tip will save you time.

For example, to search the National Association of Social Workers​ website, add site:.socialworkers.org/ to your keyword search.

Google Scholar (Advanced)

Google Scholar appeals to lots of folks because it is a free web search engine that appeals to our love of a Google Search. Instead of the entire open web, however, Google Scholar indexes only the scholarly literature portion of Google. This can include peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, theses and dissertations, and more. 

Limitations

• Google Scholar results often lead you to a great abstract that you cannot access without payment. The number of times this happens can be limited if you link your Google Scholar account to your Vogel Library access. If even the Library Links can't get you the article you need, you can request it through Interlibrary Loan. Contact me anytime to help you do so!

• Google Scholar results seem to prioritize older articles. This is because they sort their relevant results based on the popularity of both the publication in which the source appears and the author of the source. This can limit you from seeing new scholars or scholars who may be more marginalized in their fields. Remember, while peer review is considered a pretty effective system, it's still shaped by the culture in which it exists, and at this time, some voices hold more weight in academic circles than others.

Strengths

• Searching Google Scholar feels a lot like searching Google, which appeals to our everyday behavior of information searching.
• The advanced search functionality and the "cited by" option provide options many paid databases do not provide.

Connect Vogel Library to Google Scholar searches

Vogel Library has a subscription to RefWorks, the citation management tool that helps you track and cite your resources correctly in your papers. These videos will help you get started using RefWorks. If you have questions, contact the library.