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Search and Find - Information Searcher's Journey

How do I know if this is a good source?

After various searches, it is desirable that you have a lot of literature and information, but how can you make sure you can use it?

The most important advice is: Be critical. Especially on the internet, both good and unreliable material is available, because anyone can publish anything there without any supervision. Even a trustworthy entity may be something other than what might be inferred at first glance. Also keep in mind that Internet pages are updated, content is renewed and removed, and sometimes it may happen that the information used will no longer be found in a few months or years.

It is also worth being open-minded. Sometimes a hit can be found a little beside your own topic and offer a new perspective. For example, well-being at work has been studied a lot and in different professional fields - perhaps you could find tips for the health and social services sector in the construction sector? Or at least benchmarks?

Electronic resources (e-books, articles and databases) offered by the library are pre-selected high-quality materials, but they can also contain non-scientific material that needs to be critically evaluated. 

If the article has an entry on peer review (referee or peer review procedure), it means that the journal's editorial board has reviewed the content with experts. Peer review ensures the reliability and the quality of the content.

Unfortunately, not everything that looks scientific is scientific. For example, for journals and magazines, it is worth checking whether a journal/magazine has an ISSN number, whether it can be found in known databases (e.g. DOAJ) and whether the publisher is reliable. You can also try to see if the journal/magazine or book publisher can be found on the JUFO portal.

You can get acquainted with the evaluation of data sources, for example through these videos:

http://www.karelia.fi/fi/tutkimus-kehitys/avoin-tiede-ja-tutkimus