Week 8

Verified, written by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg, is a book about, as the cover states, “How to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online.” It is very informal and digs deep into subjects that you thought you knew about. Chapters 6 and 7 are particularly important because they cover topics such as peer-reviewed articles, scholarly articles, and where to find them, Wikipedia, and finding research on Wikipedia. It sounds pretty basic and elementary, but Caulfield and Wineburg give you a new way of doing research—one that helps you get the most accurate information.

Chapter 6 begins with discussing peer-reviewed articles, what they are, and why. The purpose of getting a paper peer-reviewed is to get your paper checked by another researcher, or “peer,” and see if it needs to be fixed before publication. The authors explain that researchers study a specific topic and write about it, send their journal to an editor, the paper is edited and scanned to fit the criteria, then it is sent to the reviewers. These reviewers will analyze the essay, and either reject it, accept it, or leave it in a “limbo-like” state. It is a long task, but worth it in the end. Scholarly articles are also discussed in this chapter. Using Google Scholar as a scholarly source, Caulfield and Wineburg guide the reader using two examples. Google Scholar works similarly to Google (surprisingly) and lets you see information within the online articles. This chapter explains that using online articles on Google Scholar is great for a literature review, and then having it peer reviewed afterwards can help get your paper published. The following chapter shows another way to get your facts for research.

Chapter 7 puts a strong emphasis on Wikipedia’s change over the years and its reliability. Initially, the website had a bad reputation for the information, and students were warned to avoid it for facts; however, things have changed, and there are now standards for getting wiki articles published. Bots and humans are constantly monitoring the website so that people can get the information they need. The authors mention that Wikipedia is a good starting point for all kinds of research, and checking the citations on wiki pages is a good way to fact-check information. Wikipedia is constantly changing for the common internet user who is simply looking for facts.

On a completely different subject, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is something studied. Carrie Dils’s videos explain how to use it and its effects on markup. It is like HTML in the fact that it is all coding and has a particular syntax to get it done efficiently. It looks a bit complicated to the naked eye, but practice makes perfect. I can see how this would be extremely useful for freelance workers.