• Whether the information deals with your questions (relevance)
• Whether you can count on the information to be as true and undistorted as possible (credibility)
• Whether you can count on the author(s) to have a recognized knowledge in the subject area of your research questions (reliability)
• Whether the author(s) seem to provide information in a fair and balanced manner (objectivity),
• Whether the information is within the right time frame for your topic (currency)

Relevance

A source is relevant if it gives information that can help answer research questions. Just because keywords appear in the title, the abstract, or the article itself does not automatically mean that the information will be relevant to research.

Reliability

The reliability of a source depends on the credentials of the author(s). A source is reliable to the extent that the author(s) have a recognized expertise on the topic or appear well informed on the topic. They may have used information from others who are considered authorities on the topic and would have given them credit for their contribution through some kind of reference, such as a footnote.

Credibility

The credibility of a source depends on the way that the author(s) have presented their claims, the quality of evidence they have used to support them, and the way they have documented this support.

Objectivity

The objectivity of a source depends on the extent to which the author(s) have presented to material in an unbiased way that accounts for other opinions. Since it's not possible for author(s) to be completely objective, they at least try to be up front about their biases and treat differing views fairly.

Currency

The currency of a source depends on how well the information works within the time frame of my research questions.

BUT WHAT ABOUT EVALUATING INFORMATION FOUND ON A WEBSITE?

How does evaluation work then?

Websites and the information found on them should be evaluated using the criteria listed for other sources-relevance, reliability, credibility, objectivity, and currency.  However, since anyone can put up a website, figuring out how well a website source meets these criteria can be challenging. These websites found on Virginia Montecino's site (http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin) show different ways of evaluating the information found on websites you might want to use in your research.

Criteria to Critique the Credibility of WWW Sources (Virginia Montecino)  

The Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University  

The Reference Services of Cornell University