EESC 398 - Technical Communications

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.

Academic journals can be ranked within their disciplines based on a variety of different factors and methods. 

The most common is impact factor - which is the ratio between the number of citations received in that year for publications in that journal that were published in the two preceding years and the total number of "citable items" published in that journal during the two preceding years. 

Impact factor is managed by Clarivate via the database - Journal Citation Reports. 

EXAMPLE:

The Ecology category in JCR includes 201 journals for 2024. 

The top journal, Trends in Ecology & Evolution published by Cell Press has an impact factor of 17.3 for 2024. 

Other ways that journals can be deemed important is through who publishes them (e.g., societies or specialized groups), open and transparent peer-review, etc.