Evaluate Your Sources

Authority refers to the reputation and / or expertise of the source's author (often the source's publisher, too). Let's explore those ideas further:

Authority of the author

• What makes the author an expert on this topic? What kind of educational, work, or lived experience do they have? Let's look at an example of a scholarly journal article. The first screenshot below shows the title, author, and abstract of the article, and the second shows some information about the author at the end of the article.

  

  

  Based on the information in these screenshots, we can determine that Audra Simpson is a professor at Columbia University, and she is also a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk. From Googling her name, we can discover that she received her doctoral degree in anthropology in 2004. In this case, we can be assured that Dr. Simpson has both educational expertise and lived experience on this topic.

  Tip #1: Authority isn't the same in every situation. Make sure the person's expertise matches what they're writing about. Ex. Consider what makes a neurologist an expert in neuroscience, and what makes a knitter an expert at knitting. Each person took different paths to get their expertise. A neuroscientist is not necessarily an expert knitter. 

  Tip #2: In academic publications (scholarly journals, books, etc.) you will often see their name associated with a college, university, company or research lab. In most cases, this is the place where that person works. Here is an example of three authors that work at four different universities:

Authority of the publisher

• What is the reputation of the publisher?

  Tip #1: University presses (like Harvard University Press) are usually very reputable overall. They mostly publish scholarly work, but sometimes publish books aimed at a more general audience.
  
  Tip #2: There are a number of other reputable publishers besides university presses. Some publishers focus mostly on academic publishing (ex. Springer) but some "popular" publishers (ex. Harper Collins) also publish well-researched non-fiction that is aimed toward a more general audience.  
  
  ​Tip #3: If you're not sure if a particular publisher is a "good" publisher, ask your professor or a librarian. As you gain expertise in your field, you'll learn who the good publishers are.