Skip to Main Content

ENVM 3043 Environmental Contaminants: Other Online Resources

Evaluating Websites

It's important to remember that publishing on the web is very easy - almost anyone can do it! The problem with that is knowing what's credible (worth your time) and what's not. 

There are five main criteria that I use when evaluating a website:

  • Accuracy
  • Authority
  • Currency
  • Objectivity
  • Coverage

Some of the things you want to look at or for in a website include:

  • the URL (.gov, .mil, .us, .edu are usually pretty credible); 
  • links to information about the author or sponsoring organization; 
  • links to other sites that are credible; 
  • the currency of the page (is it updated regularly?);
  • no broken links.

Ultimately the researcher must be the one to determine whether or not to use information found on a website. Below are a couple of links to websites that provide some excellent guidelines for evaluating resources and websites:

Librarian