FALLIBLE FOX

Publication Venue (People & Context Part 5)

 

• Considering the nature of the publication can help you determine whether there are checks to ensure quality of the work.

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• In many fields, particularly the sciences, many but not all works go out of date with time. Check the date of publication and compare with more recent stuff.

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Type of publication

 

What is the publication where the piece appears? For example, is the work self-published on the author's personal blog or is it an established digital magazine? Is it published at a news or science site or a scholarly peer-reviewed journal? These questions about the publication are relatively easy to answer and say a lot. Generally, something published at a personal blog or other independent location is less likely to have been vetted by independent parties, such as editors or peers. This means that, overall, there's a a greater chance of errors and poor communication in independently published work. That's not to say that there isn't high quality content that's self-released to the world—it's just that you might have to do more careful consideration of what you're reading, knowing that there are fewer quality controls.

 

The same, of course, goes for content shared on social media. However, on top of the lack of external quality control, there's also the issue of haste—opinions and other information is shared quickly on social media, which often prevents people from even editing their own work. This comes with the benefit of immediacy. Because content can appear in real time, you can get immediate information that cannot be found elsewhere. This is a significant plus, but it means that we in the audience need to critically evaluate even more closely than when we spend time with online magazines and news sites.

 

While more faith should be generally be placed in academic works that have gone through the peer-review process, that process and the publications that use it are by no means perfect. Just because it's a peer-reviewed article, doesn't mean the ideas or research presented therein should be taken uncritically as accurate reflections of reality (see the Source Material module for more on peer-review and other scholarly sources). When we read academic works, we still need to actively use our critical thinking skills to evaluate.

 

Reputability and bias

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Once you know what kind of publication venue you're dealing with, consider (a) whether it's a reputable source and (b) whether it has a known political or ideological bias (those are different questions!).

 

Is there a common slant pervasive across works published there, or are individual works slanted in different directions? Remember that the information you have about a source's political slant should be vetted using your new metacognition tools. Where did you get your information about the magazine's politics? Did your information come from a single individual (e.g., a professor or friend) who harbours negative views of the magazine? That person may be a biased source—do your own digging!

 

Try this media bias and fact checking site: Media Bias/Fact Check. Type the publication into the search bar and it'll give you a rundown of its bias and trustworthiness. Of course, if it's important that you arrive at an accurate view of the site—say, for example, you're doing research for a course project—a single site shouldn't be the final word. It's just a start.

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Timing of publication

 

When was this piece published? Does it matter? With regard to the news, articles can become somewhat or totally irrelevant rather quickly. But the date of publication also matters for other reasons. Often, people share outrage-inducing articles from years gone by on social media. If you're only reading passively, you might take the story as something that just happened. This can be a waste of your attention and energy, raising your anger level and your social action when, perhaps, justice has already been served and everyone has since moved on. In short, old news is old news—check the date!

 

Timing also matters quite a bit when it comes to science. Often, more recent research and thought has advanced or altered the state of knowledge—older sources could be outdated in some way. You may also consider the dates on the works cited in the piece—if the author’s sources are obsolete, even a recent piece could be out of date (see Source Material module tool for more).