I’m working on a college research project on the Irish War of Independence. What’s the best way to make sure I’m reading books on the subject that are well respected within the field and will contain accurate information? Obviously it’s important to look for an author with academic credentials rather than a popular writer, but does anybody have tips for getting good research sources beyond that?
Consult Social Sciences Citation Index. It will show you what works are being cited by others, usually a pretty good sign that something is an important work.
ETA: Oops. History might be in Arts & Humanities Citation Index.
Unless I’ve gotten so old that that’s not the right answer any more.
One place to start is the bibliographies of encyclopedia articles, e.g., the bibliography at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence. You can check the bibliographies of printed encyclopedias too, but they aren’t as likely to be up-to-date as a web reference source.
Start with the bibliographies of the sources you are using. If they all seem to refer to a certain source, then that source is probably pretty reliable. I can’t speak on the subject you are writing on, but in terms of “naval history” of the US Civil War, everybody references “History of the Confederate States Navy” by J. Thomas Scharf [published somewhere in the 1880s]. I saw a copy of that at a used bookstore, so I bought it. Reading it, I can see why everyone references it. Look at the references. If it’s something all the “authorities” in the subject refer to, then there is likely a damn good reason they all do.
Just to be clear, this is the legwork that the various Citation Indexes does for you.
Actually, I think this is one of the places where Wikipedia tends to have problems (more so than in the actual quality of the content of the articles). What gets cited there often depends much more on easy availability (stuff available online is much more likely to be cited, for one thing) rather than quality and scholarly reputation. On the other hand, articles in more conventional encyclopedias (online or otherwise) are much more likely to be written by genuine experts who are actually thouroughly familiar with the relevant literature, and who have access to a university library, where most of it is still to be found.
Anyway, it is not very likely that the standard work on a historical topic like this will have been published yesterday. A conventional encyclopedia article that is not too old should be fine.
What Cheshire Human said is excellent advice too, and you will get a much better feel for the scholarly consensus that way than you will just by looking at citation indexes. (For instance, sometimes real crap, or material that puts a very idiosyncratic spin on the evidence, will get cited a lot just because a lot of people want to refute it, or use it as an example of getting things wrong.) Citation indexes have their uses, but there is no substitute for doing the “legwork” yourself.
Generally, this is a mistake. You’re dismissing people like Churchill and Hague (those not wrt your specialism, of course). Even Colleen McCullough’s series on the Roman Republic is meticulously researched. Besides, popular writers can give you different insights, and a gentler lead-in to the drier works.
No, Stentor is right. For a college research project this is very dangerous advice. Stentor is going to be judged by academic standards, and although more popular writers can be reliable, quite often they are not, and will repeat mythical accounts of events long discredited amongst academics, or will give one sided accounts of a pet theory that few if any others believe. Knowing when the popularly believed myth is wrong is just the sort of thing an academic grader is going to be looking for. Furthermore, even if an author (academic or otherwise) was respected by the experts at the time, if a work is too old (I mean many decades old, like Churchill) the field is likely to have moved on and, just how it has moved on is the sort of thing a student will be expected to know.
If a non-academic work is frequently and respectfully cited in relatively recent academic works, as will sometimes happen, then it is probably good, but otherwise, ‘popularizing’ works should be used with great care.
That depends on the course level, really. For a 100 or 200 level introductory/survey course, a reasonably respectable popular source should be fine. Obviously, at higher levels, there’s more expectation for academic rigor. Don’t cite a popular work in your 400 level seminar or graduate course “(some sub-subtopic) in the Irish War of Independence”.
You might want to try Google Scholar.
http://scholar.google.com/
When you type in the reference it will show the references to the book. Generally the more academic references to the book, the better. You can also check the papers the books use.
You mistake me: I’m not saying that all popular writers are reliable; like you, I’m noting that some can be reliable, so to disregard a source simply because it’s by a popular writer is wrong. You should disregard or use a source on the basis of the quality and usefulness - or lack thereof - of the information contained. Obviously, Stentor needs to take great care, but he should be doing that with his academic sources anyway. And let’s not forget that academic sources will have their own biases - one written by an English academic will very likely have a different slant from one written by an Irish academic.