What Makes My Most Reliable Source of Information

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What Makes My Most Reliable Source of Information?
Technological advancements have led to the creation of many information sources making it easy for people to publish information and difficult for readers to differentiate between what is true or false (Metzger 2078). Many information sources spread false information and propaganda to either push political agendas, mislead the public, push for personal agendas or sometimes for fun. However, there are still reliable sources of information both in libraries and the internet.
Personally, I consider peer-reviewed scholarly journals, research, university repositories, and articles most reliable. One can access such academic literature in scholarly search engines such as Google Scholar, Google Books, Microsoft Academic, Research Gate, etc. I consider these sources as reliable due to their unbiased nature when conveying information. First of all, articles, journals, research projects and repositories are first audited by recognized academic bodies to verify the truth of the information in them. The vetting process is done by qualified individuals in that field of study mostly professors and doctors. These pieces of literature are open to critique by peers which means that false information is first critiqued and edited before being availed to the public. Secondly, any information provided that isn’t the writer’s original work is cited and referenced correctly such that readers can visit these sources later if they wish to.

Today, most information sources are affected by outside sources such as governments or greed thus favoring one particular argument. The difference between scholarly sources such as Google Scholar and other unreliable sources is that academic sources provide both sides of the argument for the readers giving all viewpoints. The authors of such academic sources are also educated in their fields of study and therefore do not publish hearsay. For these reasons, peer-reviewed scholarly websites and libraries are my most reliable sources of information.
Works Cited
Metzger, Miriam J. “Making sense of credibility on the Web: Models for evaluating online information and recommendations for future research.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology58.13 (2007): 2078-2091.