CampusGuides: Recognizing Sources : What is Credibility?

Credibility and the Information Timeline/Life Cyle

Credibility can also be:

"telling the truth. It involves being just. But it may also involve being merciful, being empathetic" - Robert M. Berdahl, History Professor and UC-Berkeley Chancellor
the likelihood that something enables a person to form accurate beliefs and use them to make effective decisions, especially ones relevant to their lives—or at least avoids decreasing the accuracy of someone’s beliefs or the efficacy of their decisions - Columbia Journalism Review
include three aspects: clarity (how easily the article can be understood), accuracy (how well documented the information is), and trustworthiness (how believable the information is) - Credibility on Wikipedia

A few tips for figuring out whether sources are credible, reliable, appropriate, and useful for your research project:

Think about the quality control on the publisher/organization (peer review, etc.). How it is evaluated by its source impacts the evidence presented inside and how you can use it.
- Format or modality does not determine credibility!
- Decide if it is an opinion, editorial (opinion from an editor of that source), commentary (a written explanation or criticism or illustration), book review or something else
Not all .gov and .edu sources are automatically credible. You are looking for the BEST sources possible for you. That means useful, credible, and reliable.
Anonymous sources (sources with no author vs sources with a "corporate" or institutional author) are not appropriate sources.
- Usually a better quality source is available out there to settle on an anonymous source
- How do you know what their background is? Their level of expertise? (for example, Reddit)
- Anything worth saying is worth standing by
- Take the time to evaluate your sources

Definitions from Google.com via Oxford Languages.