Types of Sources
Here you will find different examples of academic sources and other sources commonly used in academic texts. The sources are organized according to the purpose for which they are best suited.
What is the Purpose of the Source?
In addition to assessing whether a source is relevant and reliable, you should also assess whether the source is appropriate for what you will be using it for. Different sources can be useful at different stages of the writing process.
When brainstorming the subject of a text, you are free to use sources that do not follow the academic criteria for source criticism, such as news, feature stories and AI-generated text.
Some academic sources are well suited when you want to familiarize yourself with a new topic, helping you get an overview and get to know the subject area and its terminology. These may include textbooks or reference works. Such sources are useful when you are interpreting or articulating a research question, and when writing the introduction to your assignment.
At a later stage in the writing process, when you are explaining, arguing, or analyzing a topic, you should also look for sources that present new knowledge, and that are recognized by experts in the field. These types of sources are, in other words, peer reviewed, and they are regarded as the building blocks of all academic work. They can be used to support the argument and the academic content of your assignment
Sources for establishing «up to date» and brainstorming
Web Pages
“Webpage” is a generic term that, in its widest sense, encompasses all that is published on the Internet.
Although you might have access to a lot of your sources via the Internet, this does not necessarily mean that they are to be sorted under the source category “webpage”. Is it possible to place the source under another category, for example “scientific article”, “reference work”, “news article” or “public document”? If so, this is the type of source you are supposed to list it as. This can be a bit confusing! For example, nrk.no is a webpage, but also an online newspaper. Store Norske Leksikon (snl.no) is a webpage, but also a reference work.
As a rule of thumb, pages that cannot be sorted as other types of sources should be treated as webpages. Søk & Skriv is an example of this, and the same goes for faktisk.no or your library’s webpage.
Webpages can be reliable and serious, completely unserious, or deliberately misleading and conspiratorial. You can find everything from reliable webpages, such as regjeringen.no, to personal blogs and webpages made by troll farms. When using webpages as sources, you must therefore critically assess their content.
Tip
The webpage EUvsDisinfo is a serious actor, whose editorial team actively works to provide an overview of cases with unreliable content.
News
News can be used to draw relevance to a topic and say something about how it is discussed in the media. Historical news can also be used to shed light on how a phenomenon, a case, etc., has been discussed. Beware, however, that news items can be influenced by political and/or economic interests, even though they are supposed to adhere to standards for objectivity and source criticism.
Columns and Opinion pieces
Columns, opinion pieces and letters to the editor are examples of sources that are often clearly opinionated.
Columns are informative or argumentative texts commonly found in newspapers. They are not usually written by newspaper employees, but, for example, by politicians or academics. Sometimes researchers use columns to convey scientifically based knowledge to the public debate. A column is aimed at promoting a point of view and is therefore in many ways akin to an opinion piece.
Opinion pieces and letters to the editor are, in contrast to columns, often somewhat shorter and subject to fewer criteria for academic content. They can also exhibit a more personal writing style. And in most cases, opinion pieces are often part of a current ongoing debate.
Popular Science Articles and Books
Popular science articles can be published on the Internet, for example at Sciencenorway.no, in book chapters, or in magazines such as Science Illustrated. In a popular science article, science is communicated in a journalistic writing style. The goal is to make research accessible to a broader audience. You can use a popular science article as a simple introduction to a relevant topic and get tips for further reading. Often, a popular science article will mention the field’s central concepts and researchers, which might help you in further searches for peer-reviewed literature.
Gray Literature
Gray literature is material and research produced by organizations outside of traditional commercial or academic publishing- and distribution-channels.
They can be of high quality and may in these cases be used and cited as factual grounds for argument. They may also be used as sources for inspiration and to draw relevance to a topic.
Scientific Reports
Scientific reports produced by universities or esteemed research institutes (as for example SINTEF, NORCE, or NIFU), often present credible and up-to-date research in specific fields. Thus, these may be used as sources in a literature review. You can also use them as sources for secondary data, that is, data collected by others, in contrast to primary data (interviews and observations), which are data you have collected yourself.
Many scientific reports are produced on request. Thus, they can be partisan and promote specific interests, and you should be attentive to how. A gray area in this case are reports produced by thinktanks, consulting firms, and advocacy groups. You ought to be extra cautious in using such reports.
Public Reports, Laws and Regulations, Legal process documents, and the like
There are many public documents and reports, both internationally (for example by various departments of the UN, OECD, and the European Commission), and nationally (for example NOUs (Official Norwegian Reports), reports to the Storting and regulations.
Reports to the Storting, hearings, and similar sources can also be of high scientific quality, but they are closely connected to legislation and can therefore be shaped by a political agenda.
NOUs concern politically relevant topics and often gather large amounts of secondary data.
For some fields, as for example law, pedagogy, child-protection, and policy-studies, these kinds of literature are central sources, setting the premise for academic practice, and are actively analyzed.
The purpose of using reports can be to study them as part of state administration, for example, or as inspiration for relevant topics. They can also be used partly to substantiate arguments, but usually in addition to scientific publications. Pay attention to the client and the publisher of such sources – they often have an agenda!
Open Research Data and official statistics
There are many places where one can collect secondary data to be analyzed or used in establishing relevance to one’s assignment.
Statistics Norway (SSB) is a scientifically independent state body with responsibility for collection, processing, and communication of official statistics in Norway. SSB offers access to statistics and secondary data on ssb.no. Read more about access to data from SSB here.
DataverseNO is a national, open archive with scientific data. In order to find relevant data, you can delimit searches for data sets by areas of study.
Zenodo is an open European research archive whose establishment was ordered by the EEC (now EU) with the aim of supporting open research and open sharing of data. Here you will find many data sets from a variety of subject areas.
Be aware!
If you want to use a table or graph you have not made yourself, it is important that you critically assess it. On what data does the presentation draw? Do you have access to the data material? Who made the presentation? Do the creators have anything to gain by the data material being interpreted in a specific way?
Text from AI-tools (ChatGPT, Copilot)
Be aware that AI-tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are not recognized as sources. These tools are designed to generate text, not to gather information, and are based on language models that guess the next word in a sentence. They are trained using texts containing a lot of information, but are not trained to reproduce information correctly. These tools are therefore better suited for purposes where the text’s flow or coherence is more important than the reliability of its content.
Video, Radio, Podcasts, etc.
Video, radio and podcasts, etc., can also be used to highlight and contextualize one’s topic. You can also use these sources to orient yourself in current debates. If academic experts are the ones making claims, you should always compare their statements with written, quality-assured sources. Be especially aware that videos and podcasts might be financed by advertising. You must critically assess the content and its relevance, just as you would other non-academic sources.
Images
Sometimes it might be relevant to illustrate a point by using, for example, a picture or a graph. If you use a photograph to substantiate factual information, you will have to make sure that the photograph is real. Try to find out as much as possible: Who is the photographer? In what context is the picture taken? Is it published through editor-controlled media or posted by a private individual? The website faktisk.no has many tips on how to fact check pictures.
Previous Student Assignments (One’s Own or Others’)
Bachelor’s theses and other, smaller student assignments can be used as inspiration. You can get useful tips regarding your thesis topic, find good tips for further reading in the reference lists, format and structure. We do not recommend using such theses as academic sources.
Be aware!
When writing a thesis, you are yourself creating intellectual property! If you choose to use an assignment you have written previously, you are supposed to cite this as its own source.
Sources for overview and introduction
Textbooks and introductions
A textbook is a text written to introduce students to a new subject area or topic. The textbook cites theories and the history of the academic field, where the aim is to include students in an academic community with its own, specific discourse – that is, a research area’s own “manner of speaking”. A textbook offers an introduction to what the subject is about, what one knows, and what problems, concepts, and theories the subject consists of. Even if it can also contain discussions and arguments, it is not the task of the textbook to argue for specific opinions. Be aware, however, that the author often puts the greatest emphasis on those theories that are closest to him or her as a scientist.
Encyclopedias and reference works
Encyclopedias and reference works contain academic, credible information. The content may vary from short introductions to review articles summarizing central theories and research in a given topic area. The latter can thus be an important source for tips on further reading. An encyclopedia article is usually not argumentative, as a scientific article is, nor as explanatory or instructional as a textbook.
Tip
If you need definitions for concepts, words, and expressions, encyclopedias and reference works can be helpful sources. If available, use subject specific encyclopedia, such as Oxford reference. You can consult the library website for your subject area for good reference works or consult your supervisor or librarians at your subject library.
Master’s theses
A master’s thesis is an extensive scientific work limited to a specific topic. Here, there are higher criteria for knowledge about the subject area’s research findings, theories, and methods, compared to other student assignments. The purpose of master theses is to create research competence in the student, but it is not an explicit criterion that the master’s thesis contributes new knowledge to the subject area. A master’s thesis can therefore be a useful source for orientation and scientific references on a topic.
Sources for specialization and discussion
Peer Review
It is expected that scientific sources have gone through a peer review process. The routines for this vary. Peer review of a scientific article always involves that the text is assessed by at least two independent experts in the field before it is accepted for publishing. The author of the article receives feedback on their text and gets concrete suggestions for improvements that must be made before the article can eventually be published. In this way, the credibility of the article is ensured. This is supposed to ensure that the article follows the academic and scientific norms of the field.
Scientific Articles (Journals and Anthologies)
A scientific article is a text where the author presents new knowledge or provides novel perspectives on a scientific question. A scientific article is primarily argumentative: It holds something to be the case, or most likely the case, and substantiates this claim with evidence (arguments, scientific results). A scientific article must therefore exhibit both sound argumentation and thorough documentation, so that the results can be replicated or verified.
Scientific articles will often be tagged with terms such as “peer reviewed”, “research article”, “scholarly”, etc (read more about what this means in the Peer review paragraph above). If the article is not tagged, you can assess whether the article presents new knowledge, or if it takes previously presented knowledge as its starting point. You should also assess the method section to see whether the results can be replicated or verified. If you still are unsure, you should consult your supervisor.
Handbooks/Companions
Handbooks and companions are regarded as scientific publications that contribute new knowledge through summarizing the “research front” or “state of the art” in a given field. These sources often contain chapters in the form of authoritative overview articles within a limited field. They are often written by the foremost scientific experts and summarize and discuss central research and theory within the field. The articles contained in a handbook are therefore also an important source for other central references, and can provide direction for further research.
Handbooks and companions do not follow a single format, nor is there a suitable term for this type of format in Norwegian.
Scholarly Monographs and Anthologies
Scholarly monographs and anthologies are larger scientific contributions or studies published in the form of a book. Monographs are books written by one or multiple authors responsible for all the book’s content. Anthologies are edited books containing chapters written by different authors, and the chapters are compiled by the book’s editors. Scholarly monographs and anthologies are written for other scientists or students.
Doctoral Dissertations
A dissertation is a larger scientific work. In many fields of study, it is common to compile a dissertation from already published articles, with an introduction or «kappe» explaining how the articles fit into the greater whole of the dissertation. In other fields, especially the humanities, writing a monograph is more common, that is, a unified work divided into chapters.
The dissertation shares some similarities with the article. It presents new knowledge to researchers, argues, is thoroughly documented, and explains the method employed.
