Authors such as best author Daniel Handler, Charles Dickens, or even Stephen Edwin King, had to go through some form of scrutiny before being determined as credible. An author’s trustworthiness is crucial in establishing the quality of sources for use in your research project or knowledge acquisition. Based on the type of source, there are numerous methods for judging whether an author is credible. However, the tactics employed for books, papers, and websites may be applied to other sorts of materials as well.
Check the prologue, prologue, introduction, and back cover of a book to see whether the author is reputable. These sections usually include information on the author’s qualifications, areas of experience, and any meaningful information the author may be willing to disseminate.
Authors of books
When assessing a book’s credibility, check the following places: the author’s note, the Foreword and Introduction, and the About the Author section (often found on the back cover). This part typically contains information on the author, such as who he or she is and the experience he or she has on the subject. If the book has reviews, you may check to see if they are from reputable sources that you have heard of rather than random individuals.
Authors of articles
The first thing you should do is look for hints in the article. Is the author’s biographical information included? Is the source a peer-reviewed or refereed journal, a newspaper, or a magazine? Is the publishing of excellent quality? After you’ve answered those questions, look to see if the author has published any other articles. One approach to accomplish this is to look for that author in the database where you discovered the original article.
You might also try looking for the author on Google Scholar. One of Google Scholar’s valuable features is that it informs you how many other papers have the author mentioned. There will be a link “Cited by #” underneath the article that you may click to check what other articles/authors deemed this material to be reliable. A large number of “cited by” references indicates that the author is credible.
Authors of websites
While many websites neglect to mention the author of the material, it is evident that there is one behind it. In order to determine if the website’s creator is credible, it is important to make sure there is an author or group of authors behind the content. Once you’ve verified that, check the “About Me” section on the website, you should also check to see whether the website has a “Contact Us” form.
Also, it is essential to check whether the website has been updated. A reliable website maintains regular content updates. The credibility of the content on a website is connected to the date that it was published or created.
In addition, you should take note of where the article is hosted. Is it a website with a .com domain? Or is it a more reputable institution like a university or a government agency? Finally, you may need to do a web search in Google, Yahoo, and/or Bing to find the author’s name. The author’s name should be included in quotation marks, as in “First last.”
Bottom line
Finding a credible author means finding reliable content. An author like Daniel Handler is well known, and you may identify their work easily. But for the “not yet famous” authors who still have great content, it’s important to use good analysis criteria to filter the reputable from the fakes.
