Evaluating Online Information

One important thing to determine when evaluating information is to determine when it was published. In various clinical sciences, it is generally accepted that you concentrate on information published in the last five to ten years. If you go beyond that point, you may find information that was disproved by newer research.

• One situation where you might to look at everything ever published is if you are doing a literature review for a research project and you want to see everything that was ever published on a particular research topic. 

Tip: To see the publication date within the article, look on the first page for the publication date.