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ENG 101 - O'Neil: Continuum of Credibility

Continuum of Credibility

The Continuum of Credibility is a tool to help you determine how closely you need to consider a source to determine if it is appropriate for use in an academic paper based on where it is published.

The continuum of credibility stretches from very skeptical sources such as blogs and personal websites to much less skeptical sources like book by experts and peer reviewed journals

*Pro Tip: Just as with your own writing, audience is critical to evaluation. When a noted expert is authoring a newspaper or magazine article, they are anticipating a popular audience and write accordingly. So even though you may have the most brilliant thinker of all-time on your topic writing a piece, it is only "scholarly" if their audience is other scholars.

Breaking down the continuum of credibility