Currency: timeliness of the information
- When was it written, published, and/or last revised?
- Are you looking at the most recent version?
- If applicable, do all the links work?
Relevance: importance of the information for your needs
- Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
- What is the intended audience?
- Does it provide evidence or support your ideas?
- Does it add anything to your work in comparison to other sources?
- Would you be comfortable citing this source in your research paper?
Authority: source of the information
- What are the author's qualifications? What are those of the publishing party?
- Who produced the information or what organization are the author(s) affiliated with?
- Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email adress?
- If the material is protected by copyright, is the name of the copyright holder given?
Accuracy: reliability, truthfulness, and correctness of the content
- Is the factual information verifiable with complete references?
- Is the information supported by evidence?
- Can you verify part of the information by other sources of personal knowledge?
- Has the information been peer-reviewed or refereed?
- Is the information free of grammatical, spelling, and other errors?
Purpose: the reason the information exists
- What is the purpose of the information? e.g entertain, inform, opinion, marketing, etc..
- What is the intent of the author and/or organization? Does it appear objective?
- Does the information acknowledge other perspectives or conflicting information?
- Are there political, religious, ideological, cultural, institutional or personal biases?
