Environmental Management  Tags: environmental_management environment  

How do you discriminate between credible and non-credible information on the internet?  The following guidelines show suggested evaluation criteria and how the aspects can help identify whether or not information is credible enough to be used for university assignments. This is a general guide to criteria, there may be exceptions depending on what type of information you are looking for.  

WHAT TO LOOK FOR:

• Author is identifiable and qualified to write about the topic.
  
• Publisher and Place are identifiable.
  
• Domain in the url .gov (from a government institution) or .edu (from an educational institution) are generally ok to use. What about .org* (from a non profit organisation)?  Assess information from .org carefully.  Some .org are credible and some are not.  We cannot for example use the information for university assignments from  http://en.wikipedia.org as it is an encyclopedia that can be updated by anyone (not necessarily an expert on the topic), however sites like www.cancer.org.au would generally be ok.
  
• Date produced or published is given, the information is up-to-date, or the information may not be recent but is still valid.
  
• Coverage information needed is covered in terms of time period, geographical area, or level of detail in relation to the topic.
  
• Content information is not biased, and is correct in relation to information from other credible sources.

WHAT TO BE AWARE OF:

• Authors not stated. Authors not necessarily qualified to write about the topic.  Authors sometimes have commercial interests (beware) for example of drug companies, equipment vendors etc.
  
• Domain in the url .com (commercial site) - be wary of using information from .com sites as the interest is usually to sell something, so the information may be presented only to support commercial interests. Assess information from .org carefully.  Some .org are credible and some are not. 
  
• Content information is opinion but pretends to be fact, information is biased, or not correct in relation to information from other credible sources.

See example of a credible internet site