Make your selection

✅ Make your selection: critically assess the information found

It's important that the information found is accurate and objective. The reliability of information can be assessed in various ways.

The CRAAP test

C	Currency	The information is current. How recent is the website where you found the information? When was the website last updated? Is it current enough for your topic? The latter depends on the field of research. For example, legislation can quickly become outdated, but historical research can remain reliable for a long time.
R	Relevance	The information is relevant. Is it related to the topic? Does it answer your question? Who is the information intended for? Is it not too difficult or too easy?
A	Authority	The information comes from the right authority. Who is the author? Is the author an expert in the field? Who funds the website where the information appears? Does the author have a good reputation?
A	Accuracy	The information is accurate. Is it supported by facts and evidence? Are sources cited? Is the information peer-reviewed? Can the information be corroborated by your own knowledge or other sources? Are opinions presented as facts? Do you find any spelling, grammatical, and/or typographical errors in the text?
P	Purpose	The information has the right purpose. What is the source's purpose? To inform, entertain, influence, sell, etc. Is it about facts or opinions? Is there any bias? Do you detect personal, religious, ideological, political, etc. biases in the text?

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Fake news?

You should also check whether it's fake news. Some ways to detect fake news are to pay attention to the following:

Check the source: look beyond the article itself and browse the website. Check out the site's mission statement and contact information, among other things.
Read on: don't rely solely on an article's title and introduction, as they can sometimes be misleading. What's the whole story?
Check the author: look up the author. Is he credible? Is he genuine? Does he have the right expertise?
Sources used: click on the links that lead to the sources used. Determine whether the information supports the story.
Check the date: is the news still relevant?
Is it a joke? Satirical articles are often posted online. Research the website and author.
Check biases: consider whether your own beliefs and opinions influence your judgment.
Ask the experts: not sure? Ask a librarian or instructor to fact-check, or visit a fact-checking website.

Recognizing a scientific article

A scientific article is always structured the same way. This way, you always know where to find the information you're looking for and you can easily check whether the article is reliable.

1. The heading

In the article header, you'll find information about the journal in which the article was published, the title, author(s), and the research institution(s). Below that, you'll find the abstract, a short summary of the article. This is followed by the introduction, which explains the research and formulates the problem statement. The methodology describes how the researcher collected the data, enabling other researchers to replicate the study. Here, you can check whether the research was conducted reliably.

2. Discussion of the results

The researcher then discusses the results in the discussion section of the article. Here, the results are interpreted and explained. Conclusions may also be presented in this section, but are primarily presented in the conclusion. This section presents the main findings of the research.

3. The source list

Finally, there's the bibliography or source list, where you can find all the sources consulted in writing the article. This section is useful for checking whether the researcher has used reliable sources, and you can also use it to find new sources for your own research.

AI tools and applications

There are several AI tools that can help you analyze literature. With Elicit, the AI tool that generates research reports, you can chat with the tool and ask questions about the report's content.

ChatPDF is another tool where you can upload documents and have paragraphs explained, summarized, or rewritten in an understandable way. The tool works for both Dutch and English articles.

Finally, there's also Notebook LM, a tool from Google. Here too, you can upload files and texts and chat with the program about the document's content. When uploading multiple documents, you can even ask it to make connections between the different texts and learn how they relate to each other. Here too, you can upload both Dutch and English articles.

Make your selection