Skip to Main Content

PSY 498: Experimental Psychology

Is it credible?

Is it credible? by MaryAlice Wade

Evaluating Authors

An author's organizational affiliation is usually listed at the top of the PDF of the article:

First page of an article with author affiliations highlighted

A Google search for Susanne H. Stanley University of Western Australia yields

A profile of the author, her publications, contact information etc. from the University of Western Australia. 

Her ORCID page with a brief biography, positions held, education, and publications. An ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a "free, unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities."

Her Google Scholar Profile page, which lists her publications and a chart of how often they have been cited by other researchers. Note that not all authors have created a profile for themselves in Google Scholar.

What types of information available for a given author will vary, but you should be able to at least verify their organizational affiliation and education.

In magazine articles, authors' organizational affiliations may be listed, often at the end of the article:

Text of magazine article showing authors' names and affiliations.

Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests: Authors of research studies should reveal their funding sources and whether they have any conflicts of interest. For example, if the article is about the effects of smoking and their funder is Phillip Morris, Inc (an American tobacco company), it could indicate their results are biased in favor of the tobacco industry. This information may be on the first or last page of the PDF of the article.