Assessing quality on the web
Now that you have got your search results back and you want to look through the items, how can you tell if they are any good?
Narrowing down your search criteria can help you to filter out unwanted results.
There are different factors to consider when assessing quality:
- Ranking
- Authors, Peer Reviewing and Hosts
- Up-to-date?: assessing currency of information
- Other search engines
- When is it time to use a subject-specific gateway?
1. Ranking
Google uses a complex ranking system which puts search results in a particular order determined by many factors. If you've used very specific terms in your search, you may hit the target first time with items that are very relevant to your search.
(In most cases, for the purposes of your specific subject or document search, you can ignore the sponsored links column on the right hand side of Google - those sites are paying to be there).
Really want to know more?: Article on ranking from Google Newsletter for Librarians
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2. Authors, Peer Reviewing and Hosts
How can you tell if the article you have located on the Internet is a valid piece of work and worth using in your research?You need to determine WHO wrote it, WHAT other people might think of it and WHERE it has been published.
Who?: Is the author credible?
- Is the author affiliated to an organisation?
- Have they already got other material visible on the Internet or in print?
- How to check?
What?: Peer reviewing: what do other people think of the article/document?
- You can assume that an article that has been published in a journal has gone through an editorial process (therefore has been peer reviewed) and therefore has been accepted and approved for publication.
Note: If a version appears online, it may be an earlier version of a per that has subsequwntly been published in a diffrent version elsewhere - Disclaimers are common, i.e: the views of the author do not necessarily reflect those of this organisation (etc, etc)
- Phrases to look for: draft, not for citation,
Where?: Who runs the website where the online material is held? Is the organisation legitimate / well known? Can you tell anything from the URL / domain name (glossary link here?) - can help you determine the website where the online item is held?
- Try to judge the relationship between the authors of documents and the host websites where they are to be found
- if you are not sure of the quality of a resource, check the home page of the domain name. Not all domain names are obvious, so check for explanations of where the site is based, or who it is hosted by
- Search Tip: In the Google Advanced Search: You can opt to search for items from specific web sites only or exclude web sites that you don't want results from.
Example: This search looks for items that are about vaccines and India and are from the DFID web site domain address: dfid.gov.uk
You can also use for just org or country domains: ie. org, uk or edu
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3. Up-to-date?: assessing currency of information
Is the information current? Is the project still running? When was the home page last updated?
Obviously, just because a paper is a few years old doesn't make it irrelevant, but check for more recent items to current show activity on the site and more recent items from the same author.
Search Tip: you can use Google Advance search and the advance features on many search engines to restrict your search to items that have been added more recently to a web site. ie. useful for when you may know that an item is recent so that you can filter out older materials, BUT some time spans just indicate when an item was added to that particular site, not the actual age of the document - so check your results.
Search Tip: Although still being developed, check Google Scholar as a source for peer reviewed items: this site consists of scholarly academic types of material, so the material is therefore already presented as being of a certain quality: Google Scholar
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4. Other search engines
Other search engines are available: what can they offer?
[back to top]5. When to use a subject-specific gateway?
Subject gateways tend to be compiled by librarians, information specialists or subject specialists with knowledge in particular subject areas. Therefore, users can assume quality control and and selection processes are involved in compiling gateways
Most resources included in gateways are selected and abstracted by humans.
Information is arranged in topic area and you should be able to search or at least browse the site.
