Never has looking for information been easier than in the era that we live in. Before, there were libraries and archives. While these places can provide most of the things that you might be looking for, there are quite a few issues with using them. First of all, not everyone even has access to them, which makes the distribution of knowledge dependent on whether you have access or not. Secondly, it takes a lot of time to dig through every book in the hope to find one paragraph that is actually useful. Now, we have the internet too, making things way simpler as than before.
The internet is an amazing source of information on basically any topic that you might think of. And you can do all that from the comfort of your home, or from wherever you want to! The only problem is, as the volume of information on the internet increases, finding what you need gets increasingly difficult as well. Not to mention the amount of false information, as anyone can go and write something on the internet – no matter whether it is true or not.Â
So, how can you work around this issue and find what you’re looking for more easily? Well, in this article, we will talk about tips and tricks that are going to help you with that!
Search engine summarizersÂ
If you want to get to the point as quickly as possible, opting for a search engine summarizer might be your best bet. There are different variations of the form in which the information that you type in can come up. A search engine summarizer at https://plex.page gives you a condensed version of the information found from millions of reliable databases by using Abstractive Multi-Document Text Summarization. Other such summarizers can filter out all the unreliable websites, or focus on a certain area, and similar.Â
In any case – this is a great way to skip all the hustle regarding just going through a huge number of websites by yourself.
Google Scholar and why it is useful
When we talk about finding reliable information, there’s no better tool for finding reliable information on the internet than with Google Scholar. The reason for this lies in the fact that Google Scholar is a search engine that looks up scholarly literature. Just consider how much fact-checking needs to happen for a scientific article to be published. This is why you can rest assured that the probability of finding the right information in scholarly literature is extremely high.
The biggest problem with Google Scholar is that it leads you to the article, but not every article can be accessed. There is a large portion of free access journals, but there are a lot of them that can’t be accessed without a subscription. If you are a student, make sure to ask your university officials if they can provide you access in case you run into a locked article.Â
The problem of legitimacy and how to solve it
We’ve mentioned legitimacy in the previous paragraph, but, is there a way to work around Google Scholar? Reading scholarly literature isn’t all that simple and straightforward, especially for those that aren’t used to the format in which papers are written. Luckily, a piece of information doesn’t necessarily have to be approved by the science community to be true – take news for instance. If something is objective knowledge, you can find it in places around the internet and still be sure that it is reliable. There are some things that you must check first though.Â
Is the source mentioned?
The mention of the source is always important as it adds to the credibility of the information. If you stumble upon an article that is claiming certain things, and there is no author mentioned – you shouldn’t trust the source. Hiding behind anonymity is a no-go when it comes to looking for reliable info.
If so, are there any credentials to the source?
So, what about your next step if the source is mentioned? Well, you should look up the source further. In some cases, you might actually find that the source is unreliable after a quick search. Always be critical – even if the source is a known figure, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are knowledgeable about the topic that they are talking about.
Always check the writing quality!Â
The last piece of advice in this article is that you take a closer look into the writing quality of the article that you’re reading. If you happen to find grammatical errors or similar issues, the probability is high that the same amount of effort went into the fact check as well.
In the end, finding the right information might not even be that hard after all. All that you need is to be familiar with a few tricks, and you will be able to find what you’re looking for in no time! And now that you do, all that’s left is to take action and use the presented tips, so, good luck!