A Credible Source

A credible source is a one that is backed up by evidence and is written by an author who is well established in his or her own field. A well written source can also be identified by their publishers as many well established publishers would only take on the works of the authors that extremely learned. Sources can be of many types and forms and sometimes these types along with the publishers can help us identify where they fall on the credibility spectrum. For example a work published by a college publication company can be trusted more than a work published by a non college publisher.

The forms of sources include, websites, newspapers and articles, books and digital media. All these sources are different as the finite number of people who review it varies in quantity. For example the people who review website articles are less as compared to the people who review a book published by a college publication and therefore this makes websites a less credible source as compared to books. The credibility of these sources go from being a book to be the most credible to websites being the least. Newspaper and articles fall in the middle as they may be reviewed by one to three people or more in some cases. On the other hand the number of people review a book varies from publisher to publisher but it would be safe to say that the number can go from 5 to 50.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind when viewing a website as many websites also offer data which is backed up by raw evidence and can be found in educational websites ending with “.edu” instead of the traditional “.com”. Usually websites which end with “.com” should not be trusted as much as they are commercial websites geared to appeal to a specific audience.