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Choose your school district and use your district's TexQuest password.

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You will have to login to TexQuest to access this resource folder.

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Welcome to Britannica School, a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Search across a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.

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Make sure MLA IS SELECTED!

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Working with sources is an important skill that you'll need throughout your academic career.

It includes knowing how to find relevant sources, assessing their authority and credibility, and understanding how to integrate sources into your work with proper referencing.

This quick guide will help you get started!

Finding relevant sources

Sources commonly used in academic writing include academic journals, scholarly books, websites, newspapers, and encyclopedias. There are three main places to look for such sources:

Research databases: Databases can be general or subject-specific. To get started, check out this list of databases by academic discipline. Another good starting point is Google Scholar.

Your institution's library: Use your library's database to narrow down your search using keywords to find relevant articles, books, and newspapers matching your topic.

Other online resources: Consult popular online sources like websites, blogs, or Wikipedia to find background information. Be sure to carefully evaluate the credibility of those online sources.

When using academic databases or search engines, you can use Boolean operators to refine your results.

Evaluating sources

In academic writing, your sources should be credible, up to date, and relevant to your research topic. Useful approaches to evaluating sources include the CRAAP test and lateral reading.

CRAAP test

CRAAP is an abbreviation that reminds you of a set of questions to ask yourself when evaluating information.

Currency: Does the source reflect recent research?

Relevance: Is the source related to your research topic?

Authority: Is it a respected publication? Is the author an expert in their field?

Accuracy: Does the source support its arguments and conclusions with evidence?

Purpose: What is the author's intention?

Lateral reading

Lateral reading means comparing your source to other sources. This allows you to:

Verify evidence

Contextualize information

Find potential weaknesses

If a source is using methods or drawing conclusions that are incompatible with other research in its field, it may not be reliable.

Integrating sources into your work

Once you have found information that you want to include in your paper, signal phrases can help you to introduce it. Here are a few examples:

Function

Example sentence

Signal words and phrases

Neutral: You present the author's position neutrally, without any special emphasis.

According to recent research, food services are responsible for one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

According to, analyzes, asks, describes, discusses, explains, in the words of, notes, observes, points out, reports, writes

Supportive: A position is taken in agreement with what came before.

Recent research has confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity by observing light from behind a black hole.

Agrees, confirms, endorses, reinforces, promotes, supports

Argumentative: A position is taken for or against something, with the implication that the debate is ongoing.

Allen Ginsberg denies the importance of artistic revision ...

Argues, contends, denies, insists, maintains

Following the signal phrase, you can choose to quote, paraphrase or summarize the source.

This means including the exact words of another source in your paper. The quoted text must be enclosed in quotation marks or (for longer quotes) presented as a block quote. Quote a source when the meaning is difficult to convey in different words or when you want to analyze the language itself.

Paraphrasing: This means putting another person's ideas into your own words. It allows you to integrate sources more smoothly into your text, maintaining a consistent voice. It also shows that you have understood the meaning of the source.

Summarizing: This means giving an overview of the essential points of a source. Summaries should be much shorter than the original text. You should describe the key points in your own words and not quote from the original text.

Citing sources

Whenever you quote, paraphrase, or summarize a source, you must include a citation crediting the original author.

Citing your sources is important because it:

Allows you to avoid plagiarism

Establishes the credentials of your sources

Backs up your arguments with evidence

Allows your reader to verify the legitimacy of your conclusions

The most common citation styles are APA, MLA, and Chicago style. Each citation style has specific rules for formatting citations.

Tools and resources

Scribbr offers tons of tools and resources to make working with sources easier and faster. Take a look at our top picks:

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A quick guide to working with sources Working with sources is an important skill that you'll need throughout your academic career. It includes knowing how

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Citation Machine®: MLA Format & MLA Citation Generator

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Citation Machine® helps students and professionals properly credit the information that they use. Cite sources in APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and Harvard for free.

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Created by Carissa Hufford, Liberty High School

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Created by Carissa Hufford, Liberty High School