Religion and Theology - Information Competency: Finding relevant and solid sources

As a researcher your working material consists of academic publications, although other sources can also be helpful. For instance, Wikipedia works perfectly well if you need to know quickly what the birthdate was of an eminent figure from the past. Nevertheless, this chapter will focus on academic literature. This has to answer to other standards than popular scientific publications. 

Scientific publications are written by academics for academics. Their purpose is the presentation and discussion of research findings and the advancement of hypotheses and theories. Scientific publications generally consist of (most of) the following characteristics:

• An introduction explaining the research question
• Description of the method by which the issue or problem has been addressed
• Results in the form of observations, measurements and analyses
• Discussion of the results
• Conclusions of the research
• Reference sources supporting the research

Furthermore, if you are going to write an academic paper, you preferably want to use peer reviewed articles. These are articles that, before publication, have been reviewed extensively by peers in the academic field to make sure they are up to academic standards. Flawless research is impossible, but this method should prevent the biggest mistakes.