In the earlier times writing a research paper was never an easy task. Internet has been a boon and simplified life in such wonderful ways that it has become much easier to write than ever before in the past. The amount of material that is available on the internet is in abundance and much more than you need and it can sometimes pose challenges that you wouldn’t have thought of. The main concern it poses is that with so much material available, it becomes very difficult know which is the right and best content for you. To figure out the validity and authenticity of the content becomes too difficult and sometimes it so happens that researchers end up using content from sources that are fake, unauthentic and sometimes not even recognized only because they don’t know how distinguish between right and wrong material.
How to find the right source? From the extension of the website it is possible to identify whether the source is genuine or no. Usually the domains whose extension ends with “.gov” or “.edu” are lined to educational or government related websites and good sources. Try to stay away from sites that are purely commercial and trying to sell products of any type as usually they would have biased content. The same is true for personal pages as well as they are quite unreliable.
How to check references for authenticity? Whatever be the source that you choose, look for articles containing references. Mostly in articles these days you will find embedded references. The references that you find in an article can most of the time prove to be very good references in themselves and sometimes even better than the article itself. However, it is always better to double check the reference, even if you do not plan to use the source.
Look for indexing to know the journal reputation: Whether you want to get a paper published or you want to look for articles for the purpose of referencing, end of the day you must ensure that the papers you chose for your research are the ones that belong to journals that are high on indexing as they would have good quality papers published in them consequently adding repute, quality and authenticity to your own research.
So, with these few basic tips, you can easily find good and reliable content online from amongst a big deep sea of material available.
