| Using
World Wide Web Sites in Research Papers
Tips
for Searching the Web
Tips
for Evaluating the Web
Traditional
quality controls that exist in scholarly publishing
are absent from web sites that are outside of the
databases on ALADIN. Therefore, when you use these
web sites for papers, the burden is on you to evaluate information for quality. Here are recommended
criteria for looking critically at web information:
- Authority--Who
is the person or organization who created the
web site? How readily identifiable are the credentials
of the authors/publishers.
- Accuracy--Who
collected the data? If not the author, is a verifiable
source given? Can the author/publisher be contacted?
Does it look like the site is being regularly
maintained?
- Audience--Who
are the potential users of the site?
- Objectivity--Are
there any clues the the information on the page
may be biased? What are the goals and objectives
of the site?
- Clarity--Does
the page explain up front what is available at
the site, and what is not included? Is there an
explanation of the context of the research or
the criteria for including or not including certain
information? Are there disclaimers on the page?
Tips
for Citing the Web
- Use
of Web pages to support arguments in papers is
permissable under the fair use doctrine of the
copyright law as long as you:
- Quote
accurately;
- Don't
quote out of context;
- Give
credit to sources;
- Quote
a reasonable portion of the page (quoting the
entire page would be too much--paraphrase if
necessary)
- Cite
the page from which the information is taken,
not the home page (unless, of course, the home
page is where you got the information).
- Web
sites often have a lot of missing information.
Do your best to include as much information in
your reference as your style guide requires, but
realize it may not be possible to find it all.
- Always
print out a copy of the page on the day you looked
at it, in case the information you referenced
gets moved or dropped.
The
basic citation format for a web site in Turabian
style is:
Author's
Last Name, Author's First Name. Title. Publication
Place: Publisher, Date Published. [Online]; available
from
http://web.site.html;
accessed Day Month Year; Internet.
Sample:
Madin,
Mike. Academic Info: Film Studies Gateway.
Academic Info, 1998. [Online]; available from
http://www.academicinfo.net/film.html;
accessed 1 Sept. 2000; Internet
Click here for
more samples in many formats.
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