An academic journal contains meticulously-researched articles, written by researchers who have a very deep knowledge of a very narrow field.  

By contrast, web articles written by amateur webmasters, or even professional journalists, generally reflect a shallow knowledge that has been watered down and simplified. 

While some simplification is necessary in order to give causal audiences (or TV viewers) the gist of a complex issue, when you are doing academic research, the gist isn't enough.

Students at other universities who have posted their projects online, reporters and magazine writers, and even professors who write on self-published web sites (like this one) can post web pages that are full of mistakes.  

Don't Believe Everything You Read Online

Some professional-looking web pages are complete hoaxes, such as this completely believable -- but entirely fictional -- "History of a Victorian Era Robot".  See also this article on prankster Joey Skaggs, an artist who makes a career out of tricking gullible journalists.

How is the novice researcher expected to be able to sort out the good stuff from the worthless stuff? You can't do it on your own; you have to rely on credible sources to do that for you. That's why it's worth the effort to check what the academic journals have to say about the subject you've chosen to research. 

• What is an Academic Journal?
• Finding peer-reviewed journals with EBSCOhost
• Academic journals vs ordinary magazines
• MLA's "Minimal Guidelines for Authors of Web Pages"
  (If your online source doesn't provide information such as author, date of publication, the source for every fact and figure, and a complete bibliography, then you probably haven't found a good source.)

See Also

• Planning to Use the Internet to Research a Paper? (UWEC English)
• Literacy Weblog (Dennis G. Jerz)

by Dennis G. Jerz
28 Dec 1999 -- first posted.
22 Jul 2002 -- last modified

ORR Home > Articles > Academic Research > Using Journals

---

Related Links

Dennis G. Jerz Integrating Good Sources If your college instructor wants you to cite every fact or opinion you find in an outside source, how do you make room for your own opinion? Paraphrase. Quote Selectively. Avoid summary. David Nies and Dennis G. Jerz Using MS-Word to Format a Paper in MLA Style This step-by-step set of directions will help you use MS-Word to format an English paper properly. Dennis G. Jerz MLA Style Bibliography Builder Updated to handle web sources (Jan 2001).  Choose a form, fill it out, and push the button... you will get an individual MLA "Works Cited" entry, which you may then copy and paste into your word processor.