by Kimberly Jacobs

Created on: February 18, 2009   Last Updated: March 09, 2009

Writing research papers is an essential part of a good high school and college educational curriculum. Research papers give students practice in developing a thesis, performing research, avoiding plagiarism, and finding sources for information. While the digital revolution and the World Wide Web have changed the face of research in the last twenty years, real books remain the backbone of any good research program.

Students performing research at any level must learn to judge the reliability and value of any information found online. Although there is much information available on the Internet, students must understand that any person or entity can publish any information at all on the Internet, without any vetting whatsoever. Some pages, such as Wikipedia, can be edited by anyone at any time with very minimal effort; vandalism, or replacing correct information with incorrect or inflammatory information, can be widespread.

It is somewhat easier for students to judge the value of information found in printed sources. Scholarly journals and publications released by well known and respected publishing houses are generally well researched, vetted and edited. There is not much doubt, for example, that any article published in the American Journal of Medicine would be a fine source to cite in a research paper.

Printed books and journals also offer a more permanent source which can be referred back to at any point by the researcher or the reader. Internet sources often come and go, with pages deleted and domains expiring constantly. It can be confusing to return to a cited source only to find a page error, missing article or even a totally different and opposite article altogether. Any researcher would be able to refer back to a printed source to read the cited reference at any time. Printed sources, real honest-to-goodness books and journals, should remain a staple of any researcher's cited sources. This is not to say, however that Internet or online sources are inappropriate; however they should supplement, not replace, published works. Online sources make great starting places to further research. Once a researcher learns to distinguish reputable sites and reliable information, he or she will have at his or her fingertips a revolutionary tool to access a wealth of information that has never before been available to any but the most dedicated researchers at academic institutions. But this resource must be used wisely to produce valid research and backed up with printed materials that support it.

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