RADAR Evaluation Method
The RADAR evaluation method is used to critically evaluate studies and decide whether they are worth including in your work.
Relevance - HOW is the information that you have found relevant to your assignment?
- Does it touch on all or most of the parts of your question?
- Is the information presented in a way that you can use it to answer your question? Or is it too advanced for where you are in your learning?
- Does it fit all of the parameters of what you need to find?
Authority - WHO is the author?
- Is the author a person, a group of people, or even an organization?
- What are the indicators to believe they are an authority on the topic they are writing about or studying?
- Do they have specific credentials?
- Do they have an association with a reputable institution or organization?
- Is the author well known in their field? Have you tried to Google them?
Date - WHEN was the information published?
- Does the year of publication cause concern for the relevancy of the information?
- Is it too old?
- Is it too new and not yet verified?
- Are the citations presented as up-to-date and relevant as possible?
Appearance - Does the source look SUSPICIOUS?
- Is the author speaking from a personal or a professional position? Is it written in a professional tone?
- Do they make a lot of generalized statements without pointing to data or other references?
- Has the source been peer-reviewed? Does it mention what type of peer-review?
Reason for Writing - WHY did the author publish it?
- Does the author provide a reason for why they chose the topic or question?
- Do they indicate if they were funded to do this research?
- If yes, is the funder linked to profit from the outcome of the research (e.g., Coke funding research around soda drink consumption in youth)
- Does the author provide a balanced perspective on their findings?
Content adapted from Mandalios J. 2013. RADAR: an approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. J Inf Sci, 39(4), 470-478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889.
Peer-Review
The peer-review process can be long and involve many iterations of feedback and corrections.
Peer-review can also be conducted in a few different ways, including:
- Double-anonymous peer-review - where both the peer-reviewers and the author don't have access to each others names and identifiable information.
- Single-anonymous peer-review - where either the peer-reviewers or the author are disclosed, but the other isn't. Often times this is when the authors are anonymized and the peer-reviewer feedback is open.
- Open peer-review - where both the peer-reviewers and the authors have their names and affiliations disclosed and often times the peer-reviewer comments are openly published alongside the final article so that readers can see what edits were made in the publication process.
