The Essential Guide to

Using the Web for Research

Finding High-Quality Information

Contributors: Nigel Ford

Book Title: The Essential Guide to Using the Web for Research
Chapter Title: "Finding High-Quality Information"
Pub. Date: 2012
Access Date: February 05, 2014
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9780857023650
Online ISBN: 9781446287927
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446287927.n4
Print pages: 37-53
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the
pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446287927.n4
[p. 37 ↓ ]

Chapter Four: Finding High-Quality

Information
Why You Need to Know This
• Whatever the type of assignment on which you are engaged – whether a
basic level essay or an advanced research project – you need to find and
make use of authoritative information.
• Some of this information may be provided for you by your lecturers, for
example in the form of recommended reading lists. However, as you
progress from basic to more advanced levels of study, you will increasingly
be expected to be able to find high-quality (relevant and authoritative)
information for yourself.
• First, you need to know exactly what is meant by ‘authoritative’ information.
Those marking your work will expect you to know this, and to avoid the use of
information that is not appropriately authoritative.
• You also need to know how to find it. Whilst it is easy to find large volumes of
information, it is more difficult to find the type of high-quality information you
require for your academic work.
• You need to be aware of the problems and potential pitfalls of information
seeking so that you can avoid and overcome them. This chapter explores
the nature of such difficulties. Tools, techniques and strategies for countering
them will be introduced in Chapters 5 to 8.

This chapter will define what is meant by ‘authoritative’ information, and will explore the
processes entailed in effectively finding it. But before we go any further…

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Think
What exactly is information – and how does it relate to knowledge and learning?

[p. 38 ↓ ] As is the case with the terms understanding, knowledge and learning
presented in Chapter 2, it is important to note that information can be defined in many
ways, for different purposes, and from different perspectives.

The following is the working definition that I have adopted for this book. As stressed in
Chapter 2, the important thing is not to attempt to present some universal definition of
these terms upon which everyone can agree (an impossible task), but to ensure that
both you as reader and I as writer have a shared understanding of how they are used
in this book. Here, then, is my working definition of information, and how it relates to
knowledge and learning.

Information is the expression of (a part of) someone's knowledge. Information may be

expressed in recorded form (e.g. a book or video) or communicated live (e.g. a lecture
or conversation).

If learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge, then information is the raw
material fuelling this process.

Information is transformed into knowledge via the process of learning.

There is a universe of information sources ‘out there’ accessible to you via the web,
many of which are freely available. Others require payment. However, your university
will have subscriptions to a wide range of such sources as well as its own library
collection of resources. A key skill required of you is to be able to effectively navigate
the range of information sources available to you both from your library and freely
over the web. We will be examining the range of different types of information source
available to you later in this chapter. There is also a range of different types of search
tool that can enable you to find these different types of information. Again, we will be
exploring these later in this chapter.

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But first, let us explore the notion of authority in relation to information. You will recall
from the discussion of evidence-based claims and arguments in Chapter 2 that
authoritative sources should be used to support assertions and propositions that you
present in your work. In the discussion of critical thinking in the same chapter, we noted
the need to distinguish between authoritative and non-authoritative sources.

Defining ‘Authoritative’ Information

At all levels, from basic understanding of a new topic to the critical analysis of
controversial issues, you need to make use of authoritative information. This is
necessary since the person marking your essay or project will be asking:

[p. 39 ↓ ] What evidence have you put forward in this essay/dissertation

to convince me that what you are saying is reasonable?

There are plenty of information sources, on every subject under the sun, written by well-
meaning (and sometimes not so well-meaning) people. However, if you don't know
anything about them it is perfectly possible that the information is flawed. It may be
poorly argued or it may be partially or completely inaccurate.

But how do you know if information is of high quality, especially if you are new to the
topic? Well, in the academic world a key concept relating to quality is peer review. Peer-
reviewed information is information that has the stamp of credibility because it has been
subjected to independent review by experts.

Books, journals and conference proceedings published by scholarly publishers or

professional organisations will generally be peer reviewed. This means that before a
book, book chapter, journal article or conference paper is accepted for publication, it
will be sent to independent reviewers who are expert in the topic area. Frequently these
reviewers will recommend or require certain changes to be made before the work is
accepted. This is a way of ensuring that high academic standards are met. Theses and
dissertations produced for an academic qualification are also peer reviewed in that they
are examined by independent examiners chosen for their relevant expertise.

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Figure 4.1 integrates the notions of quality and credibility relating to information sources
into the model previously presented. These appear as the new dimension labelled on
the top face of the figure.

Figure 4.1 Credibility of information sources

[p. 40 ↓ ] Finding and using peer-reviewed information is important in relation to your

study at both the top and the bottom of Figure 4.1 – i.e. whether you are just beginning
a new topic/subject or are at a more advanced stage.

In the early stages of your learning about a new topic or subject, you are trying to
discover what are generally agreed by experts in the field to be the key facts, ideas
and arguments making up the topic or subject. At both basic and advanced levels, it is
important that what you say is based on authoritative sources. In other words, you need
to back up what you say in your written work by referring to these sources. By choosing
those that are peer reviewed you can be assured of a certain level of academic quality.

At a basic level, you should refer to these sources to support your claims and
arguments. Recall the example given in Chapter 2 of the quality difference between the
two claims:

‘Females tend to be better at expressing positive emotions when using

social networking sites.’

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‘Females tend to be better at expressing positive emotions when using

social networking sites (Thelwall, Wilkinson and Uppal, 2010).’

where the paper by Thelwall, Wilkinson and Uppal was a peer-reviewed source.

At more advanced levels you will probably come across a range of different arguments,
views and perspectives on your topic. At this level, you will be expected not just to
present these, along with references to where you found them but also to assess them
– to compare and contrast them in terms of their contribution and limitations in relation
to answering your essay or project question. You will also need to present your own
considered view, made in the light of this possibly conflicting evidence.

At this level, being peer reviewed does not indicate that an argument or view is
necessarily ‘correct’, but rather that it is reasonable – i.e. evidence-based. You can still
find diversity of opinion in peer-reviewed sources. You may disagree with a particular
view, but to argue against it you will need to present counter-arguments and appropriate
evidence. You may find such counter-arguments and evidence in other peer-reviewed
sources.

In Chapters 4 to 7 we will explore how to use the web to find information that has the
authority stamp of peer review. However, non-peer-reviewed sources, such as blogs or
websites of individuals and organisations, can at times be useful – but with appropriate
caution and evaluation. When you are using sources that are not peer reviewed, you will
need to establish for yourself their credibility. You will also need to establish and justify
to your reader the credibility of these sources and the reasons why you have used them
rather than a more conventional peer-reviewed source.

So why, indeed, would you want to use a non-peer-reviewed source? Well, knowledge
generally progresses via the interplay between old and new ideas. New claims,
arguments, evidence and perspectives emerge that may challenge as well as build
on previous ones – even those previously well established and widely regarded as
authoritative. However, leading-edge ideas may not always be readily available in [p.
41 ↓ ] traditional peer-reviewed sources. This may be due to the lead-in time required
to get an article reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed journal. Also, it may
sometimes be relatively difficult to get a highly controversial article published in a top

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journal, especially if the article runs counter to accepted wisdom in terms of content or
approach.

Thus, there is a constant tension between consensus and novelty in the generation
of new knowledge. Creativity entails forging links between concepts in previously
unthought of ways. Extreme consensus-based thinking (strongly emphasising
convergent thought processes), in which you only ever use ideas that have been
thoroughly tried and tested, will at best result in the slow, steady accumulation of
knowledge, but is likely not to result in the discovery of really new ideas and directions.
Extreme novelty-based thinking (emphasising divergent thought processes) may spark
new ideas and directions, but at the risk of generating instead ideas that are so ‘off the
wall’ that they have little value.

This is reminiscent of Pask's learning styles. Recall that procedure building

unconstrained by complementary description building led to fragmented learning
– failing to see the wood for the trees. Description building unconstrained by
complementary procedure building led to over-generalisation – essentially similar to
overly divergent thinking in which concepts are linked in previously unthought of, but
ultimately spurious, ways.

An important question is to what extent should you…

• ‘play safe’ in your essays and projects, and keep strictly to peer-reviewed
authority sources and well-established information; or
• be creative and try to forge new connections between ideas?

In relation to research projects where you are gathering and analysing your own data,
you can generate genuinely new knowledge. However, you are not normally expected
to come up with genuinely new knowledge in more basic essays. Rather, you are
expected to show mastery of the subject matter in terms of being aware of the key
concepts and issues, and to show that not only have you understood and analysed
them, but that you have thought critically about them and formed your own view based
on the available evidence.

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So my advice is – be cautious in using non-peer-reviewed sources. If you feel that

they would contribute usefully to your essay or project, you should first evaluate their
credibility (see Chapter 9 for details of evaluation criteria and how to apply them), then
consult your lecturer before proceeding.

Information Seeking
There may be times when a quick and easy search using a general search engine like
Google is perfectly adequate and retrieves just the information you need. The major
search engines have developed sophisticated techniques to enable quick and easy
searches to retrieve much useful information.

[p. 42 ↓ ]

Some Basic Problems

However, as we saw in the previous section, Google and the other main search engines
are not the only tools you can use to find information. Nor are they always the best.
Much depends on the nature of the information you need. It is all too easy to get into
the Google habit and almost automatically use it for all yours searches. However,
depending on what you are searching for, there can be problems with this.

Search Tools
Think
There is a place somewhere in the world called ‘Place’. Use the web to find out where it
is. [Starting in Google, this information can be reached within four clicks.]

‘Place’ is located… [where?]

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Searching using only a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., is likely to
prove extremely difficult in a case like this. You should bear in mind that, although
this particular example may seem rather contrived, it is illustrative of a very common
problem that can affect your searching.

Most documents indexed by the search engines using the word ‘place’ are about places
– not specifically places called ‘Place’. Although documents that do talk about the place
‘Place’ will also be indexed, they will be completely hidden in the wealth of documents
dealing with the more common meaning of the word. On the first page of hits, Google
reports:

‘About 1,260,000,000 results’

The key is knowing about and using a more appropriate search tool. In this case, you
need a tool that specialises in place names. So if, rather than searching for ‘Place’ we
search for, say:

search world place names

we retrieve a list of sites that allow us to engage in a more specialised search by a

tool that ‘knows’ that we are wanting place names. Figure 4.2 shows the results of our
search.

[p. 43 ↓ ]

Figure 4.2 Search for search world place names in Google

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The first item on the list will take us to a site that will enable us to search specifically for
place names. Search for ‘Place’ and we will discover exactly where it is.

As noted above, this rather extreme example illustrates a very common and pervasive
problem – namely, that the precise information that you want may be hidden by less
relevant information. This happens when you can't tell a search tool exactly what it is
that you need. You can tell Google that you want information on ‘Place’, but you can't
specify that you only want to use it as a proper noun and not in the more general sense.

Similarly, you might want to search for information on, say, e-government using Google,
but you can't specify that you only want high-quality authoritative information suitable for
an academic essay. You certainly get an interesting list of sources (see Figure 4.3), but
you can't limit the hits only to high-quality academic sources. You end up with a mixed
bag in terms of quality. Again, it is a case of not being able to sufficiently and accurately
specify to Google exactly what you need.

As shown in Figure 4.3, Google has found some interesting sources relating to e-
government, but they are by no means all suitable for use in an academic essay or
dissertation.

Figure 4.3 Google search results for e-government

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[p. 44 ↓ ]

Think
Can you think of a way to search for e-government using Google – but in such a way as
to get only good-quality academic sources?

If you thought that you should use some other tool – you're right. There are a number
of tools designed to help you find high-quality academic sources. Some, like Web
of Knowledge and SciVerse Scopus, are subscription-based, but your university will
provide access to these or equivalent tools. Google Scholar, however, is freely available
on the web. It is, as its name suggests, a scholarly alternative to the general Google
search engine. Search for e-government in Google Scholar and you will retrieve good
quality academic sources (Figure 4.4).

[p. 45 ↓ ]

Figure 4.4 Google Scholar results for e-government

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As we will see in Chapter 8, we can refine our searches in Google Scholar to specify,
for example:

• The most recent information sources;

• Those within a particular discipline (Social Sciences as opposed to
Environmental Science, for example);
• Those written by a particular author;
• Those written in a particular year or between certain dates;
• Those available freely to anyone online via the web;
• Those available online to members of our particular university via the web;
• Those not available online but available in our particular university library;

and more…

We will be looking in detail at a range of such tools in Chapter 8. The point here is
that you need to be aware that a vital component of effective information seeking is
choosing the most appropriate search tool. Before rushing to a general search engine,
you should first make sure that there is not a more appropriate tool that would provide
you with much more effective results.

[p. 46 ↓ ]

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Search Strategies
Even assuming that you have chosen the most appropriate search tool to use, there are
problems that can all too easily hinder effective searching. These potential problems
mean that it is well worth your taking a little time to think about your search strategy.

When two people speak, they can easily establish the fact that they are talking about
the same thing. In other words, they can negotiate any small differences in the wording
they use almost without having to think about it. For example, if a student is studying
effects of poor school attendance and his lecturer knows that there is an excellent book
called The Effects of School Truancy, she has no hesitation in recommending it. For
both lecturer and student, poor school attendance and school truancy are to all intents
and purposes synonymous.

However, we cannot assume that such a translation necessarily takes place in a search
engine. Let us perform two searches in Google. In the first, we will enter the keywords:

the effects of poor school attendance

In the second, we will enter:

the effects of school truancy

Figure 4.5 shows the results of the two searches – the first at the top and the second
below it. This figure was produced by a website (http://www.thumbshots.com/Products/
ThumbshotsImages/Ranking.aspx) which allows you to compare different searches
in the same search engine – or indeed, the same search in different search engines.
The top row of balls represents the first 60 information sources retrieved by Google in
response to the first search (the effects of poor school attendance) and the bottom row
shows items retrieved in response to the second search (the effects of school truancy).
Each ball represents an information source. The balls representing any common
information sources (i.e. ones retrieved in both searches) would be indicated by a line
linking them across the top and bottom rows (an example of this is shown in Figure 4.6).

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Figure 4.5 Comparison of Google results for two searches using only a slightly different
way of expressing essentially the same topic

Figure 4.6 Comparison of results for exactly the same search using Google and Yahoo

The fact that there are no lines linking any of the balls on the different rows means
that, in the first 60 hits, no common information source was retrieved by both searches.
(Since search engines are constantly updating their indexes, you may get different
results from those obtained at the time of writing.)

A similar result is obtained if we search for:

looking for information

and:

seeking information

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[p. 47 ↓ ] Different results may also be obtained when exactly the same search is
performed using different search engines. Searching for:

the effects of poor school attendance

in both Google and Yahoo produces only five items in common – and they are not
ranked in the same position. The results are shown in Figure 4.6. As previously noted,
lines between the retrieved items indicate that they are identical. The position of each
ball in the row reflects its position in the list of hits.

[p. 48 ↓ ]

Think
Why do you think this happens? How is it that two searches for essentially the same
information result in completely different hit lists?

To understand how this happens you need to know something about how search
engines work. If you are aware of their limitations, you can take steps to compensate for
these weaknesses and work around them.

What You Need to Know About Search

Engines
Search engines compile huge indexes of the information to which they provide access.
These are compiled automatically by computer programs that trawl the web looking for
new documents posted on websites.

When they find a new document, they copy words that the document contains and put
these into their index, along with a link to the document. When you search, you type
words (search terms) into the search box of the search engine, describing what it is you
are looking for. These search terms are matched by the search engine with words in its

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index. Those documents that contain the terms that match your query are the ones that
are shown to you. This process is shown in Figure 4.7.

Figure 4.7 Basic search engine indexing and retrieval

[p. 49 ↓ ] At the simplest level, what this means is that if a document is indexed by a
search engine using the word school truancy, and you search for it using the words poor
school attendance, there will be no match between index entry and search query and
the document will not be retrieved (as shown in Figure 4.8).

Figure 4.8 A mismatch between search engine index terms and a user's search terms

As we will see in Chapter 7, search engineers have developed – and are continuing to
develop – techniques to lessen this limitation. Their goal is to enable search engines
to act more intelligently so that they behave a little more like the lecturer mentioned at
the beginning of this chapter, who was able to recommend a book on school truancy
to the student searching for information on poor school attendance. A number of such
techniques will be introduced in Chapter 7. The basic idea is shown in Figure 4.9.

Figure 4.9 Enhanced search engine indexing and retrieval…

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If we can provide the search engine with some of the basic common-sense knowledge
that humans possess – in this case, the fact that truancy and attendance are closely
related topics, and people searching for one are likely to be interested in the other – it
will behave a little more intelligently, as shown in Figure 4.10 overleaf.

[p. 50 ↓ ]

Figure 4.10 … leading to improved search performance

Many search tools offer a range of features designed to try to help the information
seeker find the most relevant information for his or her needs. Research is also ongoing
to try to build even greater levels of intelligence into search engines – for example,
making use of ontologies and semantic web developments.

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However, you should be aware that, for the moment at least, the ability of search
engines to make intelligent connections is limited. There is still a need to develop your
own search skills – for example, to figure out what alternative words and phrases might
be used by authors writing about what it is you need to know, and to try different ones
as necessary to refine and improve the effectiveness of your search. Figure 4.11 shows
some of the obstacles that can stand in the way between you and the information that
you need.

Figure 4.11 Obstacles that can prevent you from finding the information you need

Between column 1 (the gap in your knowledge requiring information to fill it) and column
8 (an author's knowledge that can potentially fill your knowledge gap), there are many
factors that can intervene to prevent you finding the information you need. However,
one way in which you can mitigate some of these problems is to develop effective
information-seeking skills. These include being able to:

• identify the type of information most appropriate to answering your essay or

research question;
• select the search tools best suited to finding this information;
• devise a search strategy that will make best use of the facilities offered by the
search tools in order to maximise the effectiveness of your searching; and
• monitor, evaluate and where necessary improve your searching over time.

These skills will enable you not only to be aware of the limitations and strengths of
different search tools, but also to know how to compensate for their limitations and

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exploit their strengths to your advantage. The following chapters will explore how you
can develop these skills.

[p. 51 ↓ ]

[p. 52 ↓ ]

Summary
In this chapter, we defined what is meant by authoritative information. This is important
since establishing the authority of the ideas you put forward in your work is a necessary
feature of academic work. Peer review is a mechanism for establishing the authority of
an information source, and you should generally find and use peer-reviewed sources.

However, if you are exploring the latest cutting-edge new ideas relating to a topic,
these may often be not yet available in peer-reviewed sources. There may be a trade-
off between novelty and creativity on the one hand, and consensus and established
authority on the other. Unless you are working at an advanced level, you are advised to
err on the side of caution and to use peer-reviewed sources wherever possible. Where
you do make use of less authoritative sources, you will be expected to justify this use,
critically evaluating the sources and providing evidence yourself of why they are valid
and appropriate to put forward as evidence in your work.

The chapter went on to explain some of the problems potentially preventing you from
finding the information you are looking for. Some of these problems are inherent in the
way search tools index the information to which they provide access.

You need to be aware of these limitations so that you can develop your own information
skills in order to compensate for them. These skills include being familiar with the
range of search tools available to you, and knowing which are most suitable for helping
you find the type of information you need. Different search tools also offer a variety of
sophisticated techniques for maximising the power and efficiency of your searching, and
you need to know what these are and how to use them. These issues will be introduced
in Chapters 5 to 8.

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