User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
a) The source I have chosen to evaluate is Herbicide, fertilization, and planting density effects on intensively managed loblolly pine early stand development by authors Gabriel Ferreira, Benjamin Rau and Doug Aubrey.
b) This source is classified as academic, peer-reviewed research material.
c) As per the How to Evaluate Sources of Scientific Information Tutorial in module 1, in order to determine whether a paper is academic or not three criteria must be met. First that the text in question is written by an expert in the field, second that it includes in-text citations and finally that it contains a bibliography. The authors’ affiliations with the University of Georgia and the USGS New England Water Science Center (Ferreira et al. 2020) ensure that the first criteria has been met. Furthermore, in reading through the paper they make use of several in-text citations and include a full bibliography.
In regards to whether the paper is peer-reviewed or not, the authors acknowledge that there were two anonymous reviewers (Ferreira et al. 2020) at the end of the paper in the “Acknowledgements” section. This classifies it as a peer-reviewed paper.
Finally, again as per the How to Evaluate Sources of Scientific Information Tutorial, the inclusion of “Methods” and “Results” sections distinguishes this paper as a research paper.
References
Ferreira G, Rau B, Aubrey D. 2020. Herbicide, fertilization, and planting density effects on intensively managed loblolly pine early stand development [Internet]. [cited 2020 Jul 20]; 472:118206. Available from:https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/science/article/pii/S0378112720309750#s0100 doi: 10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118206
Tutorial: How to Evaluate Sources of Scientific Information [Internet]. Kamloops, BC: Thompson Rivers University [cited 2020 Jul 20]. Available from: https://barabus.tru.ca/biol3021/evaluating_information.html#1
