Finding and judging sources

In 2025 I shared thirty lessons from my years as a researcher, one at a time. This piece brings together six of them, all about the same thing: finding the right sources, reading them well, and knowing which ones to trust.

Lesson 1: Define what you’re looking for

When I first started research, I thought my job was to find all the information.

I was wrong.

The real work is knowing exactly what I’m looking for before I start searching. Without that clarity, I would end up drowning in papers, tabs and theories, and still feel like I wasn’t moving forward.

Defining your goal sharpens your focus, saves time and makes your literature review far more useful. It’s like having a map: you can explore detours, but you always know where you’re heading.

Pro tip: before you open Google Scholar, answer three questions.

• What is my central research question?
• What keywords and variables define it?
• What would my ideal “answer” look like?

Research without direction is noise. Research with a defined target is strategy.

Lesson 2: Google is your friend, but not your only one

When I began, I thought: “If I can’t find it on Google, it doesn’t exist.”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Relying only on Google can seriously limit the depth and quality of your work. Google is fast and convenient, but it’s built for general questions, not deep academic searching. It will give you answers, but not always the right kind for scholarly work.

Serious research means digging deeper:

• Google Scholar for journal articles and the citations between them. It also indexes theses, books, abstracts and other material from across the web, so not everything it finds is peer-reviewed; check each source before you rely on it.
• ResearchGate for published papers and preprints, and for contacting authors directly.
• Institutional databases, through your university library, for subscription journals.
• Discipline databases such as PubMed for health and life sciences, or IEEE Xplore for engineering and computing.

If you want your research to stand up to scrutiny, your sources must be credible, traceable and authoritative. Google alone won’t get you there.

Lesson 3: Reliable sources are non-negotiable

The strength of your research isn’t only about how well you write. It’s about how solid your foundation is, and that foundation is built on your sources.

You could spend weeks crafting a brilliant argument, but if your sources are weak, the whole thing collapses under scrutiny.

Here’s my personal checklist for reliable sources:

• Peer-reviewed journals: research that experts have evaluated.
• Official reports: from government bodies, NGOs or reputable institutions.
• Conference proceedings: where new research often appears first.
• Academic books: from recognised publishers.

Research is like construction. The quality of your materials decides the strength of the building.

Lesson 4: Read less, learn more

In research, information overload is real. If you try to read every word of every paper, you’ll burn out fast.

The secret is to skim for the big picture and scan for the specifics you need. Your goal is not to know everything, whether it’s relevant or not.

Pro tip: use two kinds of reading.

• Skim the title, headings, abstract and conclusion to get the overall message of a paper, book or report.
• Scan for the key terms, figures and data that relate directly to your research question.

This doesn’t make you a lazy researcher. It makes you a strategic one. The best researchers don’t read more; they read smarter. Save close, word-by-word reading for the papers that turn out to matter most.

Lesson 11: Your literature review is never really “done”

When I started out, I thought the literature review was a one-time task, something to finish before moving on to data collection.

Now I know it’s something you keep coming back to. As your project moves forward, you will:

• discover studies you hadn’t seen before;
• see old papers through a new lens;
• rethink your understanding as new evidence appears.

Instead of treating the literature review as a box to tick, treat it as an ongoing conversation with your field. Every update makes your work sharper, more relevant and more connected to current knowledge.

Pro tip: set up search alerts for your key terms in Google Scholar or your main database, so new papers come to you while you work.

Lesson 16: All sources are not created equal

Not everything you find online is worth citing.

One of my early mistakes was treating every article, blog post and report I found as equally credible. They’re not. A blog post written without evidence is not the same as a peer-reviewed journal article. A random PDF on the internet is not the same as an official dataset.

Before you cite something, ask three questions:

• Who wrote it? What makes the author credible on this topic?
• Where was it published? What is the reputation of the journal, publisher or platform? Is the journal genuine, or predatory?
• When was it written? Is it still current, or has newer evidence replaced it?

Your conclusions are only as strong as the sources they’re built on. Credible research comes from credible sources.

What ties these together

Every one of these lessons comes back to the same idea: good research starts long before you write. Know what you’re looking for, search beyond the obvious, read strategically, keep your reading current, and be strict about what earns a place in your reference list.