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This Is Auburn Auburn University Libraries LibGuides

Industrial Design

This guide is aimed primarily at students and faculty in the School of Industrial and Graphic Design.

Citing and Evaluating Resources Information for Industrial Design

 

About Background Sources

Background Sources are books, encyclopedias, almanacs, reference books, etc., containing condensed subject information. This allows the reader to "get up to speed" quickly on that subject; therefore, background sources are usually the best first place to start your research. When using this type of source, you should note the following:

  • The time to publish these materials is generally longer than that for journal articles, so they may not provide the most up-to-date information.  Nevertheless, they can give a good idea of what is happening in a field of study.
  • These sources are classified as tertiary since they are often compilations, condensed versions, and commentaries on original works. Tertiary sources are not usually used as a direct reference for scholarly work - the researcher should find the source from which the tertiary version is based. References found within the background source can lead to primary research and notable authors that will assist you in the rest of your research.
  • Reading or scanning these sources can inform you of relevant terminology related to the subject, which will help
  • you identify keywords for article searches.

About Evaluating & Citing Articles

One way to evaluate an article is to consider where it is published.  Scholarly Journals are the gold standard for publication in many fields because of their more rigorous peer review processes.  Conference articles may go through some peer review processes, often less stringent than journals.  The reputation of a journal is also worth consideration and is indicated by its impact factor.  Links to resources that will help you evaluate these aspects of the publication are given below.  Other considerations include how current the article is and whether the authors are authoritative and unbiased.  You can find much of this information in the bibliographic information for the articles found in the databases.

As soon as you find the best articles for your research, you will want to cite them appropriately.  The rest of the resources on this page will help you do this correctly and efficiently.