Unless you have first hand experience of the subject that you intend to write about, you will eventually need to do some research for your articles. How you source your information is crucial to being able to construct a robust argument for or against something, and for giving your own writing credibility with your audience. Ethical sourcing is about giving credit where it is due.

Most of us have a lot of wide ranging experiences. We can draw on those for the basics of an article, but to flesh out the subject and make it a good read, we need to add extra information. Choosing your sources carefully is very important. It is easy to run a few key words through a search engine such as Google and come up with a list of forums, blogs and web sites. Are these credible sources of information? No, not by themselves. Comments posted on forums and in blogs are no more credible than the basics you already have from your own experiences. They are anecdotal and can be misleading. You can refer to them in your article if you wish, but remember to make it clear that it is just one other person's opinion and use them as a starting point for further investigation.

Many people consider news articles online for national and international publications such as The Times or the Dallas Morning News as credible sources of information. Be wary of relying on news publications from countries that you have little or no experience of. Unless you know for sure what political bias the newspaper has, or how credible it is perceived to be in its home nation, it is better to use the information sparingly. The British daily newspaper The Sun is often quoted by Americans when talking about current affairs, yet in the UK, The Sun is known as a tabloid and not given any credibility for presenting factual news. Whenever you quote directly from a print source, you should reference it correctly either in the main text, or at the end of your article.

Use sources of information that are not predominantly online. There is a myth that just because something appears on two or three web sites, it must be true. This is not the case in all circumstances. The ease of publication on the Internet has meant that dubious content is repeated ad hoc and becomes seen to be accurate when it really is not. We had books before we had computers, and in most libraries books are still available. Spend some time researching, following references, and exploring a subject before diving in and writing a piecemeal article. Many libraries also have documents held on microfiche that you can browse. These are often old copies of newspapers and other official documents. Newspapers can be considered as either primary or secondary sources, depending on the context that you use them in. To reference a newspaper as a media interpretation of events would be a primary source; to reference a newspaper report of something happening when the journalist was not present, is a secondary source. Primary sources should be used wherever possible.

The main issue with ethical sourcing is when the writer does not reference where the information came from. If you want to use some information, and you have seen it in several places but it is not clear which was the original, then you should list one of the sources but clearly indicate "origin unknown". If you are using information from a report or document, then you should reference it clearly and fully at the end of your article, using one of the standard formats such as the Harvard style. Opinion pieces rarely need references included at the end, but factual writing stands up better to scrutiny when evidence to support your argument is provided and referenced.

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