Web Savvy -- Page 5 -- Publishers and Style

Besides looking at the author, how else do you know that a web page's content is reliable?

Look at who published it and at the page itself.

Is the page an article from a scholarly journal that publishes online? Such journals are available through Highwire, Directory of Open Access Journals, and Biomedcentral. They also sometimes appear as preprints or reprints on individual scholars' web sites.

Is the page part of a well known magazine, wire service, major newspaper, or broadcast service' web site, such as CNN, the BBC, Time, Newsweek, or the New York Times? Such organizations have reputations to protect and practice quality control.

Is this an official government or organization's web site and does that organization provide "real life" contact information?

If you have trouble finding a publisher's name or contact informtion, look for an About, Mission, or Contact link. If a publisher does not offer contact information, then consider NOT using the web site in your research.

If the web page takes the form of a paper or mentions the works of others, does it have a Works Cited or Bibliography at the end? If a scholarly or informative web page mentions or uses others' works without citing them, this is a very bad sign.

If you encounter an organization or publisher that you do not recognize or that you think is questionable, please ask a librarian or faculty member to view the web page.

Now let's look at some web pages and their publishers...

Click on this thumbnail to see an organization's "About" page with addresses and phone numbers.

Click on this thumbnail to see screen views of a web site published by a questionable organization.