Before trusting a source of information it is always useful to stop and ask, "Who is responsible for this information, and why should I trust them?" Most of us find it easy to be critical if we disagree with a source, but it is important to evaluate all your sources.

Here are a couple of quick considerations for your academic writing:

• Is the author a subject matter expert or a professional journalist adhering to a code of ethics? 
• Has the writing been fact-checked and edited?
• Has the writing been peer-reviewed?

To learn more about credible news sources, you can check out our News Sources Research Guide. 

Scholarly peer-review is a time consuming process and not all reliable sources of information need that level of scrutiny. If your instructor requires you to use peer-reviewed sources, be sure to verify your article meets that requirement. Watch the video on this page for more information.

Researchers at the Stanford History Education Group did a study and discovered that most of us aren't great at knowing how to find out if the information presented as facts is true or not, even trained historians! 

So who is skilled at spotting inaccuracies and misinformation? Fact-checkers.

Professional fact-checkers have developed some shortcuts that are useful for all of us to know. One of the most important is to read laterally - that is, to check some basics by consulting other sources before you consider information trustworthy.

Mike Caulfield has written a free textbook on how to check facts. In a nutshell, here are four things you can do and one habit to adopt to become better at distinguishing what is factually true. You may not always need to do all four moves - you may find out in the very first step that someone reputable has already determined something is true or false, and then you're done.

• Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.
• Go upstream to the source: Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
• Read laterally: (Caulfield learned this phrase from the Stanford researchers.) Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
• Circle back: If you get lost or hit dead ends, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

An important habit to add to the four moves: Check your emotions. 

Some arguments rely on "pushing your buttons" ie. provoking an emotional response which makes you more likely to immediately adopt or dismiss a claim. Instead, try to reason your way through an argument and weigh facts objectively.

For more information, check out Caulfield's free ebook, Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers.