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Currency

Currency looks at how recent the information was published or created. The importance of this factor will vary depending on your topic. If you're researching World War II, articles from 1996 and 2012 might both be appropriate. If, however, you're researching breast cancer you may know that facts change very quickly in that field and information from 1996 will likely be very outdated. In that case you'll want to stick to very current information.

Some questions that will help you evaluate the currency of an article are:

• When was the article published?
• If the author included citations, are they to recent publications?
• If the author included data, is the data from studies done recently?
• Is my topic one that demands very recent information?