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Writing Samples

12 May, 2016

Key Points on Using the Internet for Research

The Internet has become an enormous and valuable tool for anyone engaging in research

activities. The purpose of the present sample essay provided by Ultius is to discuss the use of the

Internet for research, and more specifically to provide key points regarding how to use the

Internet effectively for this purpose. The essay will begin with a brief overview of the history of

the emergence of the contemporary Internet. Then, it will consider one of the key issues when

using the Internet for research, which consists of evaluating sources for credibility. Then, it will

discuss three specific examples of using the Internet for research: domain names, Wikipedia, and

academic databases. By the end of the essay, the reader should have a good sense of how to use

the Internet in an effective way for research purposes.

Overview of the Internet

The Internet has a long and complex history, not least because of disagreements

regarding the very term "Internet" itself, and what legitimately qualifies as the Internet per se and

what should instead be thought of as precursors. For example, the Internet Society has written

the following: "The Internet has changed much in the two decades since it came into existence. It

was conceived in the era of time-sharing but has survived into the era of personal computers,

client-server and peer-to-peer computing, and the network computer. It was designed before

LANs existed, but has accommodated that new network technology" (paragraph 24). The

specific technical terms in that quotation do not matter for present purposes; the only point here

would be that the Internet has undergone significant evolution over time. The Internet proper,
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though, in a way that would still be recognized today, probably came into its own during the

decade of the 1990s.

Among other things, the Internet has completely revolutionized the way that people do

research. For example, even professional academic writers, such as the ones here at Ultius,

seldom have any need to go visit physical libraries, anymore. And this would be because almost

all the resources needed for doing academic work can now be found on the Internet, if one only

knows where to look. This is part of a broader trend of libraries becoming relatively obsolete in

modern times. As Siegler has written: "It's not hard to imagine a future where the majority of

libraries cease to exist—at least as we currently know them. Not only are they being rendered

obsolete in a digital world, the economics make even less sense" (paragraph 7). The Internet has

thus clearly become a major research tool in the contemporary world. It is, however, worth

discussing one of the main issues that emerge when doing research on the Internet: this is the

issue of credibility.

The Issue of Credibility

Credibility is an important issue when citing sources within an academic research paper.

As the Purdue Online Writing Lab has indicated: "Regardless of what type of sources you use,

they must be credible. In other words, your sources must be reliable, accurate, and trustworthy"

(paragraph 4). Essentially, academic papers generally require the writer to support ideas and

contentions to appropriate sources from the relevant literature; and in a way, the quality of one's

paper is only as good as the quality of the sources that have been used to support that paper. For

example, if one wanted to make the argument that (say) the moon landing never happened, then

one would probably not be able to find credible sources to support this thesis, although one

would surely be able to find a great deal of fringe sources within the blogosphere.
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A part of the charm of the Internet, of course, is its inherently democratic nature: pretty

much anyone can generate content, and pretty much anything can be found (Best and Wade 255).

But when writing an academic paper and using the Internet for serious research, this feature of

the Internet becomes a kind of liability. This is because the researcher must make use of credible

sources for his paper, he must take care to filter out the credible material from the non-credible

material on the Internet. A vast number of websites, for example, merely contain random

opinions from random people, and one cannot really produce a high-quality academic paper by

relying on such material. Rather, one must know how the find the right sources that have been

authored by people with right credentials. This would be the only way to make use of the Internet

as a research tool in an effective manner.

Example 1: Domain Names

One great way to filter credible sources from non-credible sources on the Internet is to

pay attention to domain names. As the University of Wisconsin has indicated: "Some domains,

such as .com, .org, and .net can be purchased and used by any individual. However, the

domain .edu is reserved for colleges and universities, while .gov denotes a government website"

(paragraph 1). For instance, that quote itself has been cited from a .edu site, which generally

means that the site has a high level of credibility. The .com domain generally tends to have the

lowest level of credibility, due to the simple fact that anyone can obtain a .com URL and then

proceed to write whatever they want on that webpage. In short, when it comes to academic

quality and rigor, not all webpages on the Internet are created equal; and the effective researcher

must have a good idea of how to parse the good ones from the bad ones. Paying attention to the

domain name is one quick and general way to filter the information and figure out what and what

not to cite in one's own academic paper.

There may be situations in which a professor may indicate that no websites at all should

be used within an academic paper. To an extent, such a stance could be understood as a kind of

overreaction against the heaps of useless and low-quality material that can be found on the

Internet. The fact of the matter is that there is good material to be found on the Internet that can

be used as legitimate sources for one's own academic paper. One must simply know where to

look, and have some sense of the nature of the assignment at hand. For example, although .com

websites are generally low quality in nature, there are surely exceptions to this rule: if one is

writing a paper on current events, then one would probably want to cite newspaper articles, and

almost all newspapers use the .com domain suffix. After knowing the basic rules for filtering

sources by domain name, then, one must also make use of one's own intuitive sense to figure out

what would and would not be an appropriate source for one's own work.

Example 2: Wikipedia

Wikipedia poses an interesting kind of puzzle: almost all researchers make use of this

resource, but almost no one acknowledges doing so. Almost all professors tend to make a

specific note against citing Wikipedia in academic papers. The severity of this bias is odd, given

that Wikipedia is a very valuable research resource, especially when one is trying to obtain

general background information on one's given subject matter. Moreover, as Chesney has

pointed out based on empirical research, the accuracy and reliability of the information found on

Wikipedia is actually very high (although there are of course also errors here and there). Many of

the articles on Wikipedia provide information whose quality is on par with what one would find

in any actual encyclopedia; and the bias against Wikipedia would thus seem to be based more on

misunderstandings about the nature of the resource than on the actual quality of the information

found in the resource.

Nevertheless, most current researchers are in fact expected to avoid citing Wikipedia in

their own work. A good trick here is to simply scroll down to the bottom of a given Wikipedia

page, where the references used for the Wikipedia article are themselves listed—and then to

simply follow the links to those references. Again, Wikipedia articles in general have a high

level of credibility; and this is because those articles themselves cite credible sources. So, one

way to circumvent the taboo involved with citing Wikipedia articles in academic papers would

be to simply cite the original sources that are cited by those articles themselves. In principle,

there is nothing dishonest about this, if one gives proper credit to the original sources

themselves, from which the main ideas or quotations are drawn. In short, one way or the other,

Wikipedia is an indispensable tool when making use of the Internet for the purposes of research.

Example 3: Academic Databases

Academic databases contain sources of the highest quality, including actual journal

articles from academic periodicals. Google Scholar is an academic database that is open to the

entire public, although it can be somewhat difficult to find full-text versions of all the articles

indexed within the databases: often, only the abstracts (or brief summaries at the beginnings of

the articles) actually turn up. Depending on one's needs, this may well be enough. Other highly

useful academic databases include JSTOR EBSOhost's Academic Search Complete. Access to

these databases generally requires affiliation with an organization, but most universities and

colleges give their students full access to them. Moreover, several public libraries also provide

access to the databases. The present writer, for example, can simply use his credentials with the

public library in the city of Austin, Texas to access several academic databases.

Online access to these databases is one great example of how the Internet has completely

revolutionized the research process. In the past, researchers would have had to physically visit
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the libraries where catalogues of academic journals are housed; and then they would have had to

manually dig through the entire catalogue to find the specific articles that they needed. Now, all

of the articles from all of the journals are literally at the researchers' fingertips, and a search for

keywords can turn up the exact articles that the researchers are looking for. It is almost

impossible to overstate the magnitude or significance of this change of for the practice of

research, and it clearly shows how indispensable the Internet has now become as a tool for

research. Moreover, this significance is only heightened when one bears in mind that through

databases such as Google Books and Amazon, one now also has online access to a wide range of

books as well, without ever needing to get up and make it across town or campus to visit the

actual library.

Conclusion

In summary, the present essay has consisted of a discussion of key points on using the

Internet for research. After briefly discussing the Internet itself, the essay went on to discuss the

key issue of credibility, and then proceeded to consider several examples of using the Internet for

research while keeping this issue in mind. A main theme that has emerged here is that the

Internet has become vital for anyone interested in doing serious research, and that it is thus

important for all students, researchers, and writers to learn how to use the Internet in an effective

way toward this end. The issue of credibility of sources is a major one when doing this, due to

the simple fact that there is so much material on the Internet, and that the material can be

produced by practically anyone. However, one should surely not let oneself get daunted by that

fact; rather, one should simply keep the points of this essay in mind, and move forward.
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Works Cited

Austin Public Library. "Databases." Author, 2016. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.

<http://library.austintexas.gov/databases>.

Best, Michael L., and Keegan W. Wade. "The Internet and Democracy." Bulletin of Science,

Technology & Society 29.4 (2009): 253-271. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.

<http://mikeb.inta.gatech.edu/uploads/papers/internet.democ.pdf>.

Chesney, Thomas. "An Empirical Examination of Wikipedia's Credibility." First Monday 11.11

(2006). Web. 17 Sep. 2016. <http://firstmonday.org/article/view/1413/1331>.

Internet Society. "Brief History of the Internet." Author, n.d. Web. 17 Sep. 2016. <http://

www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet>.

Purdue Online Writing Lab. "Using Research and Evidence." Author, 2016. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.

<https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/588/02/>.

Siegler, M. G. "The End of the Library." TechCrunch. 13 Oct. 2013. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.

<https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/the-end-of-the-library/>.

University of Wisconsin. "How Can I Tell If a Website Is Credible?" Author, n.d. Web. 17 Sep.

2016. <https://uknowit.uwgb.edu/page.php?id=30276>.
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