Information literacy is the ability to identify, evaluate the appropriateness of, and effectively make use of, information for a particular purpose. The Association of College and Research Libraries (2016) defined information literacy as follows: “Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning” (p. 8).

Operating with scholarly integrity requires you to select appropriate sources from which to draw information and then to identify accurately and communicate the information or argument from your source. If you argue, for example, that the sky is falling in a scholarly paper, you may be accurately reflecting the assertion of Chicken Little (from Robert Chamber’s folk story reprinted in Fowle [1956]); however, you would be hard-pressed to convince your instructor that Chicken Little is a reliable and credible source. How then do you go about selecting sources of information that are considered sufficiently scholarly? Consider the diagram in Figure 3.2.1 below; it synthesizes some important considerations for selecting information sources. The sources I drew on to create Figure 3.2.1. are integrated into Exercise 3.2.1 (below).

In the next subsection, I will review the main categories of information sources to provide guidance on applying the best principles of information literacy to these sources.

Library Sources

The most obvious starting place for finding scholarly information is the AU library. You are strongly advised to draw most of your sources from the library. The library journal collections have been carefully screened and selected for quality and relevance. The librarians have created a number of resources to help you optimize your use of the library. If you are an AU student, check out the Quick Links on the main page of the AU Library.

In graduate papers, a heavy emphasis is placed on peer-reviewed and current scholarly sources. You must also be discerning when it comes to books and other monographs. If you are unsure about a source, apply the principles in Section 3.2 Enhancing Information Literacy. The library may contain self-help books, for example, which likely will not meet the criteria for inclusion as scholarly sources in your academic papers within the health disciplines.

Web Sources

At times, it may be appropriate to include carefully selected information from the web in your assignments. There are some great sources of information on the Internet, and there are some very biased and nonscholarly sources. Your responsibility, as a scholar, is to distinguish between the two. In particular, you may want to attend to the following relatively reliable information sources:

• Open access (i.e., freely available on the Internet) journals that are relevant to the health disciplines. The International Journal of Collaborative Practices, the MedEd PORTAL: The Journal of Teaching and Learning Resources, and the Qualitative Report are examples. Many journals are moving to open access to increase the accessibility of knowledge. However, the quality and credibility of these sources varies. So, be sure to read critically both the content of the article and the description of the journal. The AU library’s list of Open Access Resources allows you to search journals, thesis databases, e-books, and other repositories.
• Professional associations can be valuable sources of information on ethics, standards, guidelines, and protocols. Check out, for example, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Nurse Practitioner Association of Canada, the American Psychological Association, the Canadian Psychological Association, or the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association.
• Special interest groups, community organizations, or government sites can also offer current, well-researched, and credible documentation on current issues and trends, government policies, theoretical approaches, interventions, as well as other issues. Consider, for example, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Mental Health Association, Statistics Canada, or the Dulwich Centre websites.

There are many other independent webpages designed by individuals or groups with a range in credibility as scholarly sources. You must be careful to apply a critical lens to evaluate both the content and the source of the information. Unless you find a peer-reviewed article online or your assignment specifically permits the use of Internet sources that have not been peer-reviewed, these sources should be in addition to the minimum requirements for a scholarly foundation of your paper (See Figure 3.1.1 in Section 3.1 Discerning Appropriate Information Sources). The Society of College, National, and University Libraries (SCONUL) provides a very useful competency summary for moving from identifying digital sources through to integrating those resources into your paper: 7 Pillars of Information Literacy through a Digital Literacy ‘Lens.’

Open Educational Resources

In recent years, there has also been an evolving body of knowledge that is shared publicly through open educational resources (OERs). These are materials that are freely available on the Internet and have been specifically designated for sharing, adapting, and repurposing by others. These resources are often grounded in a social justice approach to knowledge that asserts the rights of all people and peoples to have access to credible knowledge and high-quality learning opportunities. However, you must be diligent in critically analyzing these sources for use in professional writing projects. They must meet all of the information literacy criteria for scholarly resources. Wikipedia is a good example of an OER that would fail to meet information literacy criteria for academic or professional writing, because there is no way to trace and validate the sources of any specific content it contains. On the other hand, the OpenLearn Project (available through the UK Open University) offers materials that would meet most of these scholarly standards.

Along with written materials, you can access open source images, videos, and other digital materials. It is important to review carefully the copyright certificates for these materials to ensure you use and credit them appropriately. Many OERs have a Creative Commons (CC) copyright license, which allows others to adapt, choose, rework and evolve portions, or the whole of particular materials for new purposes. Some restrictions may apply depending on the type of CC license. For example, this writing resource has a CC license that requires others to acknowledge my authorship, to license their work in a similar way, and to agree not to use the content for commercial purposes. The intent of this type of copyright is to support collaborative knowledge sharing and development. If you are looking for an image to include in a course assignment, you are best off searching for OERs; otherwise, you may be required to get permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the image. A common scholarly integrity infraction, for example, is the inclusion of commercial comics in PowerPoint presentations. Rarely have presenters obtained permission from the copyright owner.

The bottom line in selecting sources for academic papers, presentations, or other scholarly works is that you must apply a critical lens to the choices you make. If you write a brilliant paper based on unscholarly or biased sources, your paper will have little academic value, which translates into a low grade. Your choice of sources forms the foundation for all that follows: your argument and your grade!

Sources to Use with Caution

There are a few sources of information that you should use with caution in your graduate papers.

• Abstracts. In many library databases, you are able to access the abstracts for various journal articles. There may be a temptation to rely on the information in the abstract to support the points you want to make, rather than take the time to retrieve the article. However, you are expected to read the actual article before you draw on the author’s ideas. If you are unable to access the entire article, then consider finding a different source for your information. On the very rare occasions that you have no other choice but to cite content from an abstract, be sure to indicate clearly that you accessed an abstract not the full article.
• Personal communication. Personal communication refers to any information that you have obtained, either verbally or in writing, that is not publicly documented or retrievable. This includes conversations with your instructor, email correspondence, statements made in supervision or consultation contexts, or comments from an expert with whom you correspond. In most cases, ideas expressed in this context are likely supportable through the literature base. You are expected to turn to those publicly available academic sources. There are less common experiences, however, when such a source presents an idea that is innovative or stated in a particularly eloquent manner. In these cases, carefully cite your source in APA format. Online discussion posts from your graduate courses are not considered personal communication; rather, they should be treated as online forum posts. These are rarely appropriate sources for academic papers.

Many graduate assignments outline the number and type of academic sources that you are required to use. In addition, you are expected to use each source in a substantive way, which means that you draw ideas that make a significant contribution to the arguments in your paper from each source you list in your references.

The following activities are considered cheating and constitute a breach of scholarly integrity:

1. You pad your reference list by adding references that you did not actually use to write the paper. You must have read every article in your reference list. As well, each source in your reference list must correspond to a citation within the body of your paper.
2. You add a citation from which you have not drawn substantive content. For example, you have used Jerry (2019) and Nuttgens (2018) for the key points in a paragraph. However, you need one more source to meet the standards for creating a sufficiently scholarly foundation in your writing, so you find an article on a similar topic that adds nothing new; you skim the article, and add it to your citation list (Jerry, 2019; Nuttgens, 2018; Padding, 2020).

Each source you use should clearly contribute something unique to your paper. When you engage in the above activities to pad your reference list, your paper is no different than it was before you added these new citations and references. Instead, if you find yourself short a couple of sources by the time you get to the end of your paper, ask yourself the following questions:

• Which ideas have I not fully addressed?
• Which arguments, counterarguments, or issues could I be missing?
• Which key points could benefit from further support?
• Which differing voices could I include to provide alternative perspectives to the points I have made?

In other words, think critically about your paper; think critically about the sources that you are using; and integrate them in a way that is meaningful and makes a substantive contribution to the flow of argument in both your paper and your field of interest.