What About the Web for Academic Research?

The Web is not always the best place to do academic research because...

The Web is not a comprehensive source of information.
Academic researchers need to find information from a variety of sources to do the most complete research. Since you can't find everything on the free Web, you will need to use ALL the resource formats available - books, articles, databases, etc. - to collect information about a research topic. This is especially true for scholarly information and older resources.

Most information on the Web does not go through a peer-review process.
As discussed in Modules 1 and 4, academic researchers value information written by people with specialized knowledge and peer-reviewed by experts before being made available. The varied expertise of authors and lack of a peer-review process for most Web information makes it more likely that Web pages will not measure up to academic standards.

Most academic information on the Web is not free.
The Library purchases books and journals and subscribes to academic databases so you can get quality information without having to pay extra. You can use the free Web to find out about academic books and articles, but if you don't get them through the Library, often they must be purchased from an online bookstore or a journal publisher.