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Missoula College: WRIT 101

Types of Information

What is peer-review?

Peer-review is the vetting process that many academic or scholarly sources go through before being published. This process ensures that the information in the article has been checked for accuracy by a group of peers, hence "peer-review". Many academic databases have a way of limiting results to only peer-reviewed or scholarly articles. If you are unsure if a source has been peer-reviewed, you can usually find out in the "about" section of the journal.

 

For more information on this process, check out the video below:

The Research Process

Step 1: Pre-research132,700+ Academic Research Stock Illustrations, Royalty-Free ...

Step 2: Organize what you already know

Step 3: Identify Keywords

Step 4: Search for sources

Step 5: Evaluate sources

Step 1: Pre-research

Pre-research is the first step in beginning a research project.  This step gives you a broad understanding of your topic, provides background information, provides ways to narrow your topic, and helps identify possible keywords.  When doing pre-research you can consult sources like Wikipedia, Credo Reference, and encyclopedias.  These sources should be used only to gain background knowledge of your topic and cannot be used as sources for your final project. 

Try these sources for pre-research:

Step 2: Organize What You Already Know

  1. What do you already know, think, and believe about your topic/community?
  2. What is your personal investment in this community?
  3. What about your community do you find most interesting?
  4. What are the issues in your community? If you don’t know, where can you find out?

Try a organizing with a Mind Map

Complete a mind map to organize your thoughts. The University of Arizona's online topic map is easy to use.  Access it here: 

Or you can download and print a version here:

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