Once you have these skills, you can safely venture online and ensure that you don't jeopardize your grades or the quality of your research by relying on inappropriate or inaccurate non-academic sources. In some cases, you might find an academic's work published on a separate website, such as their blog. In journalism and media studies, of course, you may often need to refer to media sources, which are certainly not academic sources. While it's good practice to ensure that you use only academic sources in researching and writing your essays, it's even better to ensure that those sources are peer-reviewed, as this will ensure that they are of higher quality and highly regarded in their field. This leads many students to use non-academic sources for their essays (usually online sources) without understanding why they are doing something wrong or how they could improve their grades by changing the types of sources they use to research and write their essays.
Sometimes, the journal's website will indicate in several places whether it is an academic or peer-reviewed journal. Unfortunately, many students still don't know what exactly an academic source (or an academic source) is and what is the best way to find one. The best way to find academic sources is to physically go to the university library, if possible. In this case, it's probably an opinion piece rather than research, which would mean that it's not an academic source.
To determine if a source published in an academic journal is appropriate for your research, the first thing to do is to search for a list of references. Academics and experts in a field can publish articles on a topic for a general audience, students, or even people in their field, but if it's not published in an academic publication, it's not an academic article. During your first year at university, your professors and tutors will likely tell you several times to make sure you use only academic sources in your essays. Try visiting the journal's website and finding information about its submission and review guidelines, or search for the journal's title in UlrichsWeb's global serial publication directory for more information on this subject.
This usually only happens in high-quality university journals and publishers, although many other reputable publishers that usually publish educational and academic texts also have a review process in pairs.