Most of your research prompts will indicate that you should use scholarly sources ot a mixture of source types. Scholarly sources include books edited by a university press and peer-reviewed journal articles. Your instructor may set source minimums, for example, incorporating evidence from 5 peer-reviewed articles, etc.
Keep in mind that different source types fulfill different needs. The minimums instructors set generally refer to the content that you cite in your paper. However, you will often have to use other types of sources to help you formulate a topic. It takes some pre-research to actually find a question to investigate. This means that you will end up reading sources that you won't end up using in the actual paper, but that's part of the research process.
Reference sources, like encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and Wikipedia, provide information such as definitions, brief histories, and biographical information.
Example
The following is an encyclopedia entry about concussions from the encyclopedia The Brain, The Nervous System, and Their Diseases.
Johnson, R. (2014). Concussion. In J. L. Hellier (Ed.), The brain, the nervous system, and their diseases. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Retrieved from https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/concussion
News and magazine sources provide information about current events and social issues, which can help inform academic arguments you are making in your papers.
Example
The following article from Scientific American, a serious science magazine, mentions a new study that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which links repetitive head injuries in football players to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Costandi, M. (2017, Aug.). Striking evidence linking football to brain disease sparks calls for more research. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/striking-evidence-linking-football-to-brain-disease-sparks-calls-for-more-research/
University of West Florida, John C. Pace Library, 4:06
This video covers the purpose (what they are good for) and main features (how to identify) of encyclopedias, news articles, scholarly articles, and monograph books.
North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, 3:15
This videos explains the peer review process many scholarly articles go through before they are published in journals.
Books are useful for background information and can add depth to a research topic or put your topic in context with other important issues. Some books are also scholarly, such as those published by a university press.
Example
The following is a book about how the NFL denied the scientific evidence about the relationship between football and brain injuries.
League of Denial by
Both ESPN investigative reporters, the authors reveal how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, sought to cover up and deny mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage. This narrative moves between the NFL trenches, America's research labs and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science; it examines how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research.
Many, but not all, scholarly articles go through a peer review process, which means they are checked by academics and other experts. The articles are often based on original studies (surveys, experiments, clinical trials, etc.), reviews of previous research, or theoretical in nature.
Example
The following peer-reviewed article from Brain, a scholarly journal, concludes that repeated head hits, not just concussions, can also lead to CTE.
Tagge, C. A., Fisher, A. M., Minaeva, O. V., Gaudreau-Balderrama, A., Moncaster, J. A., Zhang, X. L., Wojnarowicz, M. W., ... Goldstein, L. E. (2018). Concussion, microvascular injury, and early tauopathy in young athletes after impact head injury and an impact concussion mouse model. Brain : a Journal of Neurology, 141(2), 422-458. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awx350
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