This short Website Evaluation Exercise is designed to give you some practice deciding whether articles found on the internet are appropriate for a college level research paper. Instructions:
Evaluate the article based on the following criteria, sometimes called the CRAAP test:
Peer review matters, especially in the sciences.
If an article has been peer-reviewed, that means an independent group of experts in that subject area have evaluated the research methods used, looked closely at the author's conclusions (including any statistical analysis), and judged them to be good science. It doesn't mean that the experts liked the article - just that they think its science is solid.
Peer review is expensive and time-consuming, so usually only scholarly, academic journals use it for research articles. If an article in one of those journals has been peer-reviewed, you can trust its Authority and Accuracy.