One way to evaluate an article is to consider where it is published. Scholarly Journals are the gold standard for publication in many fields because of their more rigorous peer review processes. Conference articles may go through some peer review processes, but these are often less rigorous than those followed by journals. The reputation of a journal is also worth consideration, and is indicated by its impact factor. Links to resources that will help you evaluate these aspects of the publication are given below. Other considerations include how current the article is, and whether the authors are authoritative and unbiased. You can find much of this information in the bibliographic information for the article found in the databases.
Once you find the right articles for your research, you will want to cite them appropriately. The rest of the resources on this page will help you to this correctly and efficiently.
Literary Styles and their application
There is no standard style for engineering, but engineering journals typically use numbered citations. Engineering publications conform to style guides that are specific to the publisher or professional organization sponsoring the journal, e.g., IEEE and ASME.
Other styles:
APA = used in the sciences, education, and business.
MLA = used in the humanities.
Turabian = used by historians.
Examples and Tools:
RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic management service that allows you to automatically build bibliographies and manage your citations.
EndNote
EndNote is a bibliographic management software package available for download through BYU's Office of Information Technology for all BYU faculty, staff, and students.
To download: OIT Software Distribution, then search for EndNote