Good resources and bad resources

Pixabay / CC0 1.0

Some resources are produced for non-academics. We may be familiar with NHS Choices and resources and sites such as these are aimed at people wanting information on diseases and treatments and in this sense, they are very good. However, they are not designed for academic consumption. The information within them is often derived from academic sources and it these sources that you should be accessing rather than websites that might interpret them. Anything from journalists should be avoided; journalists are not academics. Often they will take information from academic sources and then ‘spin’ it to make a good story. Academic objectivity is then lost as is any credibility.

When researchers and academics have conducted a study, they will report it to the academic community in the form of peer reviewed papers published in academic journals. The UHI Library has access to thousands of these and this is the best place to get your material and evidence from. When writing an essay or assessment and making a statement about something, you need to support it with academic evidence. Trying to support a statement or point with ‘evidence’ from a non-academic website does not demonstrate any depth of reading or engagement with the literature.

There is little better than finding the right resource!!