Choosing Academic Sources
A common concern amongst your University professors is that many students do not understand the importance of using academic sources in University writing. Academic sources are those that have been through a peer review process that ensures a higher standard of scholarship than commonly found elsewhere.
Academic Sources include:
- Academic journals or quarterlies.
- Academic (non-fiction) books or chapters from those books.
- Articles (not abstracts or reviews) found using databases such as Criminal Justice Abstracts, ProQuest, EBSCO, JSTOR, or Project Muse.
Other non-academic sources may also be useful to help you make your point. While these can be used (if properly cited) they should not be used in place of academic sources.
Academic Sources do NOT include:
- Non-academic Web pages.
- Fiction books (novels, poetry, and drama).
- Newspaper or magazine articles (Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, U.S. News and World Report)
- Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and other reference works.
- Movies and TV shows.
- The Bible, the Qur´an, or any other sacred/religious text.
As you compile academic sources through your research remember to keep track of the author, title, journal, publication data, and page number. You will need this later!