A Credible Search

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on

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SearchCredible is a launch page for your search. You enter your search query and then you select what you think will be a a "credible" resource such as EBSCO Host, ERIC, Oxford Journals, Wolfram Alpha or others.

This might be a good site to use with students as a way to address the topic of what a credible source even means and then why these sites might be more (or less) credible in their link recommendations.

I did a test using the ever popular vanity search. I was surprised that putting my name into scirus.com turned up over 1300 hits. SCIRUS is "for scientific information only." I actually don't see myself as a really credible supplier of "scientific research" amongst the 370 million scientific items indexed there. So, why do I show up?

Most of the hits are connected to my time at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, so it's scientific by association. The few other links that are there are mostly presentations and association I have with tech organizations. Does that make me credible? That's a good topic for discussion.

The same search at http://www.sciencedirect.com turns up nothing. Does that make that site MORE credible?

These searches might be a good entry point into information literacy.


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