4 Types of Information Sources

Consider a topic such as the safety of genetically modified food. Wading into this large and controversial area, you’ll quickly discover that information about it comes from a wide range of sources: blogs and opinion pieces, natural medicine websites, scientific research articles, government and NGO sites, as well as books, newspapers, and magazine articles.

Each of these types of sources has different content, written by people with varying levels of expertise, and written for different audiences. And each of these types of sources will have a different value for you, depending on the context and requirements of your research need. Some assignments will require that you use scholarly, academic sources that have to undergo a lengthy editorial process and therefore take longer to appear. Other assignments may allow you to use less formal, popular sources of information that may be more timely.

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Newspaper		up-to-date current events, editorial opinion, commentary, general audience
Encyclopedia, Wikipedia		overview, background information, general audience
Website		possible commercial purposes, opinion, general audience
Magazine		current events, topics of interest to general audience
Government/NGO		reports, standards, statistics, more targeted audience
Scholarly article		new research by scholars for other scholars, expert audience
Scholarly book		in-depth coverage of a topic by expert/experts, targeted audience
Social media post, blog		real-time, opinion, commentary, general audience